By Tony Edike
ENUGU—Enugu State House of Assembly has asked road contractors in the state, whose completed projects collapsed few months after execution, to return to site and effect repairs on the affected roads within one month or risk being blacklisted.

The House condemned the failure of some portions of the newly constructed roads in the state capital and its environs shortly after they were handed over to the state government, saying the roads failed because of poor execution of the contracts.

This was contained in the report presented by the Chairman of the House Committee on Works, Lands and Housing, Chief Abel Chukwu, on the deplorable condition of some federal and newly asphalted state roads in Enugu.

The committee observed that the major constraint towards the completion of Enugu – 9th Mile – Port Harcourt Expressway, awarded to Consolidated Construction Company, CCC, by the Federal Government was “inadequate budgetary allocation.”

According to the committee, only 108 kilometres of the 410 kilometres of the road, which traversed five states, received budgetary component in 2011 fiscal year, leading to a shortfall of 302 kilometres where work is yet to commence two years after the contract was awarded.

Although the committee observed that a supplementary budget was anticipated for the project, it noted that another major impediment to the execution of the contract was “the award of the gigantic road project to one contractor rather than to various construction firms to engender competition and timely completion.”