12 May 2013, Abuja – Up to 17,000 additional youths are to be recruited by the Federal Roads Maintenance Agency-Subsidy Reinvestment and Empowerment Programme-(FERMA-SURE-P) to help in road maintenance in the country.
A Committee Member of FERMA-SURE-P, Mrs Ngozi Olojeme, made the announcement in Abuja on Thursday while inspecting road projects along the Abuja-Keffi road.
Olojeme said the recruitment became necessary, due to the high unemployment in the country and the number of projects the programme planned to execute.
She explained that 34,000 km of 33 federal roads needed to be rehabilitated and the only way SURE-P could achieve enhanced delivery was to recruit youths from the six geo-political zones to execute the projects.
Olojeme said that more than 4,000 out of the 10,000 youths initially planned to be recruited had been engaged.
“We need patriotic Nigerians willing to work. We don’t just get people who will not contribute or deliver, we are carefully selecting,” she said.
She re-affirmed the committee’s commitment to sustaining maintenance of all federal roads nationwide under the Rapid Road Recovery Programme.
She said that FERMA SURE-P had completed several intervention projects, including bridge repair and reconstruction, shoulder washouts as well as potholes and cracks through direct labour.
She listed ongoing rehabilitation projects in Abuja, Nassarawa, Kaduna, Lagos, Edo, Oyo and Ogun, saying that the tempo of the projects would be sustained to beat the impending rains.
Among projects she inspected were vegetation control and de-silting of drains by workmen under the FERMA SURE-P Public Works scheme and cutting and patching of potholes along the Abuja-Keffi road.
*NAN
