2015 Budget: No provision for road maintenance – FG

Senators were shocked on Monday when the Minister of Works, Mike Onolememen, revealed that there is no provision for bad roads in the 2015 Budget proposal.
The Minister made this known while defending the Federal Road Maintenance Agency budget before the Senate Committee on Works.
Onolememen said FERMA will get zero allocation for its capital votes in the 2015 budget proposal.
According to the Minister: “Aside the ministry’s capital budget proposal slashed from the projected N100 billion to just N11 billion by the Ministry of Finance in view of economic realities on ground, zero allocations were made for capital projects of FERMA and office of Surveyor-General of the Federation.”
Onolememen lamented that in view of the lean allocation for the Ministry in the 2015 Budget, that out of the Ministry’s portfolio of about 210 ongoing road and bridge projects, only 33 have been provided for and the provisions are insufficient to encourage the contractors to sustain appreciable progress of works on site.
“No provisions have been made for other departments of the Ministry such as Road and Bridge Design Departments, Mechanical and Electrical Department as well as Service Department,” he added.
The Minister also disclosed that since 2011, the Ministry has always been owed outstanding budgeted funds totaling N203.392 billion by the end of the 2014 fiscal year.
He said: “Only N45,682,844, 395 billion was released for the Works Ministry out of 2014 capital appropriation of N98,814,368,704 billion.
“This leaves a balance of N53,131,524, 309 billion not released as at December 2014.
“It is important to emphasize that the performance of the Ministry would have been considerably enhanced if the outstanding budgeted funds of N53.131 billion had been released to the Ministry.
“More importantly, if the cumulative outstanding budgeted funds of N203,392,075,947.25 for the period spanning 2011 to 2014 had been released, the total indebtedness would have been brought down from N230 billion to N27 billion.”
Onolememen however said despite of the very lean capital budget allocated the Ministry this year, a model of Public Private Partnership is being explored for execution of more capital projects in the year.
Earlier in their separate comments, most members of the Committee described the budget profile of the Works Ministry as laughable.