Lagos State government has declared its readiness to partner with the Organised Private Sector (OPS) for sustainable road infrastructure in the state.
Special Adviser to the Governor on Works and Infrastructure, Engr Aramide Adeyoye, disclosed this, on Tuesday, while addressing members of Manufacturers Association of Nigeria (MAN) who paid a courtesy visit to her office.
Adeyoye said there is a new ray of hope for companies coming to enter into Public Infrastructure Improvement Partnership (PIIP) with the state government, maintaining that Lagos was deliberately promoting its performance index on the Ease of Doing Business metrix.
She, however, said that the invitation extended to the organised private sector to collaborate with the government on infrastructural development can only end up on a win-win situation for the collaborators
Adeyoye, while alluding to the fact that “road rehabilitation and maintenance is currently grossly underfunded,” argued that the only available option available to the state government was to create extra-budgetary funding for the maintenance of roads, even as she commended the Zenith and Access banks for their collaborative efforts in the area of PIIP.
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The Special Adviser said MAN needed to take bold steps to encourage members to partner with the government, adding that there were concessions such as tax holidays and branding and advertisement concession attached to such partnerships.
The Permanent Secretary, Works and Infrastructure, Engr Olujimi Hotonou, while noting that government cannot provide the entire infrastructure all alone, enjoined companies to come under the umbrella of PIIP to maintain and rehabilitate existing infrastructure so that government can concentrate more on the provision of new roads.
Also speaking, the General Manager, Lagos State Material Testing Laboratory, Dr Abiodun Afolabi, assured that the agency was well equipped to carry out various quality assurance tests, but warned that it had zero tolerance for building collapse.
He reiterated that Lagos State Material Testing Laboratory is operating within the ambit of its ministerial responsibilities.
Earlier, Executive Secretary of MAN, Ikeja branch, Mrs Oluchi Odimuko, commended the state government for daily upload of construction work schedule in the state but decried what she described as the outrageous bill from the material testing laboratory against the present economic reality of the moment.