By Emma Amaize

ABARAKA- GOVERNOR Ifeanyi Okowa of Delta State has said that rural- urban integration and urban renewal through gigantic infrastructure development were critical to achieving to the “Stronger Delta” agenda of his administration.

Okowa

Okowa represented by the deputy governor, Deacon Kingsley  Otuaro, disclosed this at  a two- day training programme for civil engineers at Abraka.

“From 2015 to date, as part of the strategic imperatives of our medium term plan, we have significantly advanced urban -rural integration with construction of 455 roads comprising 1, 269, 42 kilometres of roads and 517.34 kilometres of drainage channels.”

“It  bears  restating here  that provision of road and physical infrastructure is critical to building a stronger and more resilient economy, it helps to decrease  inequality,  creates employment, enhances individual productivity,  stimulates growth of micro, small and medium scale enterprises and facilitates  better living conditions in our communities and cities…” he said.

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The governor pointed out: “This refresher course is consistent with management  principle of continuous  improvement,  which enables  us to fine-tune our processes, examine areas of strengths and weakness, align our system with global trends and upscale our project deliverable through judicious allocation of resources as well as effective monitoring.”

He added that since the programme started, the government has witnessed remarkable improvements in projects design, assessment, costing and execution.

His words:  “It is imperative that we regularly upgrade the skills of those charged with driving the implementation machinery to ensure that our processes and deliverable are in tune with international best practice”

“This administration highly values the partnership of the civil service establishment in the faithful implementation of our programmes.  I look forward to hearing from you in the days and weeks ahead, and pledge our commitment to consider suggestions/recommendation from this meeting,” he added.

Vanguard