BY FESTUS AHON
DELTA State Governor, Dr Emmanuel Uduaghan, has assured that the Ughelli/Asaba Road dualization project will be completed on schedule.

Uduaghan who fielded questions from newsmen while on inspection tour of section ‘A’ of the the road project, said the state government will tackle the issue of compensation on the road project so as to facilitate the completion.

He said: “There is no doubt that there are some compensation challenges. To pay the sum of N5.6 billion as compensation alone is a huge cost, so we will look at the design in some parts of the road where there is a lot of compensation to be paid. We will see what we can done to scale down the compensation so that we can put more money on the road.

“From what I am seeing now, the contractor seemed to have woken up. He is doing better than what he had done  and from the monitoring report I  got, I was not quite happy with them. Coming to see what he is doing, I think he has woken up,” he said.

Speaking further, he urged Wokson International, the contractor handling the project, to complete a reasonable part of the project before the end of March 2011. He, however, expressed satisfaction with the quality of work so far done by the contractor.

On the Ughelli township road project, Uduaghan expressed dissatisfaction with the pace of work, holding that the State Government was not owing the contractor, Setraco on the project.

Hear him: “As far as the Ughelli Township road dualization is concerned we do not owe the contractor anything, but somehow they are slow and after my visit, I will call them to hasten their job and finish early”.

The Special Project Director, Section ‘A’ of the Ughelli/Asaba road dualization project, Mr. Sunny Onuesoke attributed the slow pace of work on the project to the non payment of compensation to those whose property were affected by the road project.