OBIORA METU
The Lagos State Public Works Corporation (LSPWC) on Sunday, said it rehabilitated 524 roads in 2021 and was targeting rehabilitation of additional 600 in 2022.
Spokesman of the corporation, Mr Samuel Ayetutu in an interview with the News Agency of Nigeria (NAN), said the over 1,000 roads were fixed between June 2019 and December 2021.
Ayetutu said various categories of major and minor rehabilitation works were carried out on 524 roads, fixed in 2021 alone, adding that, the corporation has a target to fix 600 in 2022.
“LSPWC has worked on about 1,000 roads, that is between June 2019 to December, 2021, and this varied from total road construction to strategic and major rehabilitation.
“It also includes routine maintenance, some were internal roads within public facilities, some were estate roads. And some of the work were palliative work which were carried out to provide temporary relief, especially at the rainy season when there was no clement weather for full blown operations.
“LSPWC usually spread its operations across all the 20 local governments areas, so we have every part of the state benefiting from all of these number of roads that have been mentioned which came to about 1,000.
“And if we break it down further to year 2021 only, from January to December, about 524 roads were worked on following the same pattern of various levels of interventions,” he said.
Ayetutu said six roads were fully constructed from start to finish while 111 strategic roads were fixed in 2021.
He explained that strategic roads were important long stretches linking communities, adjoining major roads and used to disperse traffic from major carriageways, constructed almost from scratch to finish.
“Our target for 2022 is to surpass the number of roads that were done in 2021, so we are looking at 600 roads in the minimum to be worked on.
“It will still follow the same pattern of sectional rehabilitation, full rehabilitation, strategic roads, internal roads, estate roads and others,” he said.
He said the corporation was able to deal with challenges of wet season repairs by using cold asphalt and interlocking paving stones.
“Our work is usually planned according to weather forecast,” he said.
He said the LSPWC has three asphalt plants in Ojodu, Imota and Badagry with a collective production capacity of 570 tonnes per hour, with 95 per cent capacity, making response to road repairs swift.
He, however, appealed to residents of Lagos state to take ownership of projects and protect the roads from all forms of abuses, warning that drain stuffing compounds and flooding caused quick road degeneration across the state.
“It is more profitable for all of us to treat the roads well,” he said.
He added that the corporation was collaborating with other relevant agencies of the state government to step up advocacy toward educating residents on dangers of road abuses to ensure change in attitude.
He thanked the Governor Babajide Sanwo-Olu administration for adequately funding the corporation to efficiently pursue its massive rehabilitation vision of zero potholes and gridlock.
