Governor Emmanuel Uduaghan says the ongoing expansion of the Asaba International Airport was aimed at meeting the requirements of the Aviation regulatory authorities to enable bigger planes land at the airport.

Speaking in Effurun while responding to the issue raised over the airport by the publisher of Vanguard Newspapers, Mr. Sam Amuka at an on-going retreat tagged ‘Landmarks and Legacies’, Governor Uduaghan said with the success so far recorded in the use of the airport by smaller planes, people are now anxious to see bigger planes land at the airport.

According to him, “We are on target to make the Asaba International Airport meet the required standards set by the aviation authorities and we are doing everything necessary to ensure that larger planes can land there”.

Continuing, he said, “there is so much pressure for bigger planes to start landing at our airport and we needed to speed up the pace so that when the regulatory authorities come, they would see that we have done all we need to do”.

The Governor clarified that the regulatory authorities requested that the hills around the airport must be reduced as one of the requirements to be met before approval can be given to enable bigger planes land at the airport.

The Governor added that the demolition of the hills had nothing to do with the visit of dignitaries to the recently concluded South South Summit at Asaba.

In his words, “the contract to bring down the hills around the airport was not awarded because of the South South Summit, the contract had been awarded from the onset but the contractor was slow, so because of the time frame, we had to engage two other contractors to fast track the completion of the work”.

Explaining further, Dr. Uduaghan said the ongoing work to demolish the hills is at no additional cost to the total project sum as it was conceptualized from the beginning.

The Governor pointed out that apart from bringing down the hills, the project also included filling up areas that were below the level of the runway due to erosion problems in the terrain.

“We are not only demolishing the hills but we need to rebuild other areas around the airport  runway as well as the valley and the banks of the stream in the area to check the flooding and erosion problems there”, he added.

He disclosed that given the topography of the state capital, there was nowhere a four kilometer of land can be achieved without meeting an obstacle in the form of a hill, valley or river. Governor Uduaghan also spoke on measures being taken to improve on security in the state.

He said his administration was working with the security agencies to ensure that criminality was brought down and that people in the state can have a better sense of security.

He revealed that the Police in Delta State have been provided with some of the most modern security gadgets and vehicles to aid their campaign against criminals in the state but quickly added that Delta State does not have the worst criminal case scenario in the country.