September 13, (THEWILL) — The Steering Committee on Ebonyi State Ring Road projects has ordered the arrest of defaulting contractors, consultants and some members of the State Projects Implementation Units (SPIU) over the conspiracy to defraud the state government.
The Chairman of the Steering Committee, Engr. Stanley Lebechi Mbam, gave the order during the meeting to appraise level of contractors’ compliance on the implementation of the resolution and Action Plan, in which the contractors who have abandoned their various projects were directed to mobilise back to sites.
Mbam, who is also the State Commissioner for Works, expressed dismay over the nonchalant and fraudulent attitudes of the contractors, who despite the warning of the State Governor, Chief Francis Ogbonna Nwifuru, to maintain prudent management of resources and live up to the terms of their contractual obligations have allowed manipulations, non-compliance and conspiracy to overwhelm the whole transactions.
He noted that the Governor had earlier in a project implementation review meeting with the contractors, the Steering Committee and the Projects Implementation Units expressed dissatisfaction with the performance of some contractors who had no commensurable work in place to justify the payment made to them and, therefore, directed them to immediately mobilise to sites.
In the meeting on Friday to appraise the level of compliance with the resolution and Action Plan, the Steering Committee observed total absence of compliance and gross conspiracy among the contractors, consultants and some members of the State Projects Implementation Units to defraud the State government.
Some of their misgivings include conspiring to collect over payment, reckless abandonment of projects, deliberate delay on implementation and misappropriation.
The Committee frowned at the situation where consultant can be engaged in place of project engineer, who is saddled with the statutory responsibility to generate certificates.
It further pointed out that the position of project engineer is a statutory preserve of a civil servant that could mortgage his earnings to ensure proper service delivery.
Those contractors who might have collected unapproved funds were, therefore, advised to return same to the state government or be ready to face the legal consequences.
Meanwhile, some representatives of erring contractors, including Kakatar CE Limited, Marco Kings Engineering Limited, and some members of the State Projects Implementation Units (SPIU) are currently helping the police in its investigation to unravel some of the hazy issues.
Sunday Ogbu is a professional journalist with eight - twelve years experience that had worked with various print and online media. Sunday specializes in news reporting with the aim of educating his readers on current social, political and economic occurences within his area of coverage. Sunday is a strong force to work with in the media industry and uses his positive attitude and tireless energy to encourage others to work hard and succeed. Sunday is inspired daily by his wife and their four children. In his free time, Sunday likes sight-seeing, reading and discussing issues of societal interest.
