The Minister of Health, Prof. Isaac Adewole, has commended members of the Nigerian Institute of Quantity Surveyors for their readiness to partner with the Federal Government to reduce the cost of construction and ensure compliance with best practices
The Minister, who gave the commendation on Thursday, while meeting with a delegation from the Institute led by their President, Mercy Iyortyer, in Abuja, reaffirmed that the Federal Government was not planning to build new Primary Healthcare Centres but to rehabilitate the existing ones.
Adewole said it would not be in the interest of the country to start building new PHCs while there were adequate number of PHCs across the country.
What was important, according to the Minister, was to rehabilitate the existing ones, make them functional, providing care 24 hours daily service with all the necessary facilities in place.
He maintained tha it would save cost and time to rehabilitate the existing ones rather than constructing new ones.
Adewole said: “The rehabilitation work is ongoing in phases and the first phase is the rehabilitation of a total of 109 PHCs covering each Senatorial District in the country.”
Speaking earlier, Iyortyer said the essence of their visit was to partner with the Federal Ministry of Health on the 10,000 PHCs project recently announced.
She said: “We wish to request for collaboration or partnership between your ministry and our Institute in the realization of your objectives, particularly in the area of efficient cost management to achieve realistic costing, project cost monitoring and evaluation, and overall project management of construction projects in your ministry including its Parastatals and Agencies.”
Iyortyer said engaging the surveying practicing firm registered with the Nigerian Institute of Quantity Surveyors and Quantity Surveyors Board of Nigeria would help the Ministry to address the issues of quacks and non-conformity to ethical standard and would also save the Ministry money for further infrastructural development
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