The Federal Capital Territory Minister, Malam Muhammad Bello, has restated his administration’s commitment to Abuja’s ongoing water works, among others.
Bello gave the assurance while conducting members of the FCT Senate Committee, who came for oversight function, round the water works and other project sites in Abuja, on Monday.
The minister said that the project was conceived to solve water problems in many parts of the city.
He appealed to the lawmakers to pay urgent attention to the project to enable the FCT Administration to meet up with it’s 20 per cent counterpart funding for the project.
Earlier, the Chairman of the Committee, Sen. Tolu Odebiyi, representing Ogun West Senatorial District, said the purpose of the project tour was to determine FCT’s priority projects.
This, according to him, will enable the committee to know where to appropriate funds to, during budget appropriation.
Odebiyi noted that having seen the projects and their importance, he would galvanize the support of other lawmakers, to ensure that the water works and other projects were completed in time.
” We want to know what their priority projects are, so that when they will present their budgets, we will know which funds to be made available for which project.
” I must also commend the team of FCTA for the extent of the work they are doing. We have seen a number of projects and we are highly impressed.
” The greater Abuja Water Works is also a very impressive work and is being funded by China EXIM bank, a foreign currency bank. I think it is important that we look at that, so that we can make plans for the counterpart funding,” he added.
Also, the Project Manager of CGC, Zhang Xiang, the Contractor handling the project, said the speed of the water works project was impeded by paucity of funds.
Xiang urged the lawmakers to expedite action on the release of 20 per cent counterpart funding which Nigerian government through FCT, was supposed to provide.
According to him, the China EXIM bank has released about 150 million dollars from its 80 per cent counterpart funding, and may not release more if FCT fails to provide its own 20 per cent.
