Kwara State Governor AbdulFatah Ahmed has embarked on an inspection tour of projects which were initiated by him or by his predecessor.

The tour was informed by the need to ensure that projects are executed according to specifications.

Some of the projects inspected included the General Hospitals, Ilorin, Offa and Omu-Aran which are undergoing rehabilitation. Others are Amberi Water Booster Station, Erin-Ile-Ilemona Road and Irra Road, all in Kwara South Senatorial District.

During the tour, he warned that contractors handling various state-owned projects should expedite action on them to ensure that they are completed on schedule, even as he said contractors who carry out shoddy jobs or finish behind schedule would have such contracts revoked.

Ahmed said: ”At the beginning of every financial year, we have a budget which is an articulation of programmes that we intend to spend the people’s money on. Once these projects have been given out to contractors, they need to be taken to completion. We want to be sure that works are carried out the way they have been idealised for implementation.

“On the strength of that, once projects are ongoing, there is a strong project monitoring team, a special adviser on infrastructure who also doubles as check and balance on developmental projects. We also need to see for ourselves the extent of progress made on such projects to ensure that we get value for our money.

“That is what informed our recent visits to various projects that are ongoing to ensure that we get value for our money. Anywhere we go to, we expect that contractors should have gotten the job to a certain level to which we have funded them.

“So far, we are happy with what we have seen. Our contractors are working accordingly and anywhere we expect to see things and they fall below our expectations, the contractor will be given a marching order.

“The [new projects] we have inspected now are works that have been encapsulated into the budget. In other words, we have clearly outlined what we intend to do with the peoples’ money. Other projects like roads, water, energy, schools and health that are yet to start will be carried out as encapsulated in the budget.

“We will ensure that these projects are carried out once the funds are available. We have the responsibility of working within the limited resources that we have. We are one of the states that receive the lowest in terms of revenue allocation from the Federal Government. Also, our revenue base is not very strong in terms of internally-generated revenue. This is largely because we have a public sector- driven environment.

“We are just trying to create an enabling environment to bring in the private sector to drive the system and create additional taxable environment that will increase the taxes and generate more revenue so that we can do more projects for the people.

“We also expect to see improvement in our health sector because a healthy society is a wealthy society. We must see, as part of our human capital development, a very strong healthcare delivery system put in place.

“That is why we pursued the renovation of hospitals. Primary health, secondary and tertiary health institutions are being equipped with the human and material resources that will give us the necessary platform for a proper healthcare delivery system. These are all geared towards ensuring that we have a strong economic environment.

“Education is not left out. Over 200 classrooms would soon be renovated at the basic and secondary levels to create additional infrastructure for our students. Additional textbooks and laboratory equipment would be supplied to schools and mega schools will be constructed.

“These schools will create platforms to accommodate neighbouring schools in terms of infrastructure like laboratories and other training equipment for students.”