TheCable

Rotimi Amaechi, minister of transportation, says there has been remarkable improvement from the Ebute-Metta to Apapa axis of the Lagos-Ibadan rail project.

Amaechi spoke with journalists on Friday after inspecting the project alongside Zhao Dialong, chairman of Chinese Civil Engineering Constriction Company.

This comes a week after the last inspection tour of the project, where the minister expressed displeasure over the slow pace of work.

The minister had said it was unlikely for the project to be completed in April.

But on Friday, he said if the construction company sustains its current speed of work, the track activity will “commence in earnest”.

“The last time we were here , I complained about the fact that they were very slow and when their chairman told me that he was coming to visit, I requested that we go to the project site and see how far they have gone,” he said.

“There is remarkable progress from the day we came till now. If you look at the roof work at the stations they have completed it in just three to four days and If they continue with that kind of speed, we should commence activity on the track in earnest.

“Mind you, If we saw the number of workers that we saw today, we wouldn’t have complained. We have been saying that they should add to their manpower and deploy more equipment to commensurate with the volume of work on ground.

“Going from here to the seaport, you’ll notice that there is a remarkable improvement, this means that something was initially wrong before the arrival of their chairman.

“I think, I need to meet with their chairman and have a holistic conversation on how to move forward.”

The minster said although work was progressing steadily, the pace at the seaport is not impressive.

He, however, said the contractor had assured the federal government that work would be intensified from the week ahead.

“Not much is happening at the seaport, but they have promised that from next week they will intensify activities,” Amaechi said.

On the legal implications of not meeting up with the contractual terms of completion, Amaechi said rather than look at the law, emphasis should be on the practicality.

“The issue about non-completion of the project at the stipulated timeframe is complex. The original time for the expiration of the contract is May, but you see, they made an argument which you cannot also fault, the argument they made was for additional works which gave them up to six months, so if you add the six months to the May expiration date, you are probably talking about next year, ” he said.

“So, instead of looking at the law, we should look more on practicality and compel them to speed up the pace of work.”