Kaduna blacklists 11 Contractors

The Kaduna State Government has blacklisted 11 contractors and have petitioned them to the economic and Financial Crimes Commission for collecting funds for projects and not executing them. The Kaduna state Commissioner for Budget and Economic Planning, Muhammed Sani Abdullahi who disclosed this when he addressed a press conference to mark Nasir El Rufai’s two years in office said the affected contractors who will never get any contract from Kaduna state government again. “Some of the contractors executed projects awarded them so badly while some of them even ran away with mobilization fee without a trace of the project. For instance we have a bridge awarded to a contractor with all the money paid but the bridge was nowhere to be found. You can see it was that bad. “We have written warning letters to erring contractors and their failure to respond or give concrete evidence that led to their failure have been referred to appropriate quarters and 11 of them are currently being probed by Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) and I think it will be too early to start mentioning their names. “All these struggles would have ordinarily taken us 12 weeks but we have spent two years trying to put things right because we inherited poorly managed government which we are trying to put together”, he said. The commissioner said the Kaduna state government has developed a master plan for Kaduna State between 2018 and 2050, which would be available for the coming governments in the state to continue and build upon saying, “with this development, the question of continuity would have been addressed in the state hence giving room for accelerated development. “We have developed a master plan for Kaduna State. The master plan will be available for the state for the next 32 years that is between 2018 and 2050. It will be available for the incoming governments to continue implementing. “It took us time to come up with the master plan but then, we deem it fit to take the pain and do it for the benefit of our dear state. We would have possibly gone farther by now in implementing capital projects had it been this master plan was on ground when we came in two years ago. “Like I said earlier, all the documents of all we are doing including that of the budget are all available across all the ministries and any interested persons can access them for clarifications”, he added. Meanwhile the Kaduna state government yesterday explained that it took the decision to sell its over three thousand houses because it was no longer sustainable to keep them. The state Commissioners for Works, Housing and Transport, Alh Hassan Mahmood Usman said what the state government was receiving less than N1million per annum as rent on the 3000 houses. “When we came on board we inherited 3,300 houses and we only got N1m as rent from these houses. “It was based on this premise that we decided to sell them to interested buyers and at that we gave those living in these houses the opportunity to buy. “Apart from that,even those who can not buy these houses ,we have invited mortgage bank to help them get the houses”. He said the bidding for the houses would be transparent to allow the citizens of the State acquire these houses, promising to ensure that proceeds from the sales would be judiciously used in other sectors. He also disclosed, his government has invited 60 investors to develop and build houses that would take care of the growing housing demand in the State.