TheCable

The ministry of power, works and housing has created 193,469 jobs, with 40,429 direct and 153,040 indirect jobs, within the two years of President Muhammadu Buhari’s administration, according to Babatunde Fashola, the minister.

Speaking in Abuja at a town hall meeting to celebrate the mid-term of Buhari’s implementation of the economy recovery and road plan, Fashola said the construction of roads, power project, housing project and macro impact on jobs was gradually increasing the purchasing power and money in the economy.

On his part, Rotimi Amaechi, minister of transportation, said his ministry had been able to save N53 billion from the ship building fund and through the rebranding of the Nigerian Maritime Administration and Safety Agency
(NIMASA).

“We believe that more fund can be gotten for the government, from the maritime sector and the president has approved a performance audit of the maritime sector,” he said.

“Part of the problem of the maritime is the fact that we have had issues with insecurity on our waterways and the president has approved a new security infrastructure that will reduce piracy, robbery in that sector.

“There were so many faculties of the maritime in universities when we came, we went about rebranding it and stop that contract award, that money was gotten from the ship `building fund, that fund are meant for Nigerians who built ship.

“Maritime transportation are the one to access the fund to buy more vessels, we kept that money, we are saving it now, the last we had about it, we had saved N53 billion.”

Amaechi said the ministry would introduce the single window which is between Nigerian Customs and Nigeria Ports Authority (NPA) to move goods within 48 hours.

He said the ministry has awarded three contracts which are Lagos – Ibadan rail, Kano – Kaduna rail and Port Harcourt – Calabar, which were based on the loan collected from the China EXIM bank.

The minister said China EXIM bank had approved $1.2 billion, while the federal government had released its own counterpart funding for Lagos – Ibadan rail, which be completed in December 2018.