 |
| Smiley from the sMirC-series. spent (Photo credit: Wikipedia) |
SURE-P spent N70b last year – Kolade
The Chairman of the Subsidy Reinvestment Empowerment
Projects (SURE-P) Committee, Dr. Christopher Kolade, yesterday said the work of
his committee is not duplicating the activities of other Ministries,
Departments and Agencies (MDAs).
He said this when he addressed State House correspondents
after presenting the 2012 Annual Report of SURE-P to President Goodluck
Jonathan.
Said he: “What people
need to do is study what is going on and see in what ways SURE-P is adding
value to what is already on ground. Nobody is denying that Ministries,
Departments and Agencies (MDAs) are working. That is what government is there
for. But the President, when he saw that there was going to be a special fund
from the subsidy withdrawal, decided that he would use this fund in a special
way to intervene.
“So that if for
instance, a road contract was awarded, say in 2006 and it is still not
finished, but by injecting some funds from SURE-P, you can accelerate the
completion of that road. These are special funds and they are special
intervention funds. They can not be compared with what is ongoing in the
ministries because ministries are doing their normal work.
“For example, the railway system, in the past, it was not
possible to move from Lagos to Kano by rail because there were gaps on the way,
places where bridges had broken down. The Nigerian Railway Corporation (NRC)
did its best to get those bad portions repaired, but with these special
intervention funds in 2012, SURE-P repaired the bridges, roads and since the
end of November 2012, it is possible to ride on a train from Lagos to Kano.
“We were even told by a cement company that because of this
possibility to travel by train from Lagos to Kano, they are transporting their
cement in bulk by rail from Ewekoro to Minna. That is adding value and it
doesn’t disturb the normal work of the Nigeria Railway Corporation.”
Dr. Kolade said the money for the SURE-P projects goes to
the contractors that are working on the projects and not to any political
party.
He said: “We are
satisfied with our performance in the last one year. Although we were
inaugurated in February, we did not get the first release of funds until July.
So the first six months of the year had passed. In the remaining six months, we
did work to the tune of over N70 billion.
“If we had N180 billion for the whole year and we spent N70
billion plus in six months, it means we worked at the rate we were supposed to
work. You know that the beginning of something new is bound to take off slowly,
it cannot suddenly start running. It was a normal start and it was accelerating
as we went through the year.”
On the focus of SURE-P for 2013, he said: “If you look at
our budget, it is still the same areas such as social safety nets, things that
will help the health of women, children, employment to young people, things
that will enable these young people express themselves as citizens of this
country and in areas of infrastructure such as building of roads, completion of
rails.
Source: The Nation
No comments:
Post a Comment