Lack Of Maintenance Culture Leading To Infrastructural Decay — Osun PS

The Former Permanent Secretary (PS) ,Ministry of Works and Transport in Osun, Mr David Olusola-Oni, has described the continuous decay in both public and private owned infrastructures as lack of adequate maintenance culture which is germaine to sustainability and development .

Oni made this known in an interview with newsmen during the 6th Public Lecture and Award presentation of the Nigerian Institution of Civil Engineers (NICE) on Friday in Osogbo.

The awardees includes the Commissioner for Works in Osun, Engr. Oluremi Omowaiye, and Engr. Mumini Olabamiji, Engr. Felix Ibitoye , Sammya Nigeria Limited among others .

He said that the poor maintenance culture of most infrastructures in the country has led to a state of decay thereby causing bridges collapse , building collapse, bad roads among others leading to lost of lives and properties.

According to him,the appropriate authorities must imbibed the spirit of maintenance culture which would help in addressing issues bothering on infrastructural decay and that would bring about the necessary changes .

The Former PS further said that quality of construction materials were not enough to ascertain the workdone by the contractor but the experience input in handling the projects and how professional is the company involved .

Oladele identified corruption as one of the yardsticks to Infrastructural decay which had left many infrastructures untouched for adequate maintenance to prolonged its sustainability .

” You will agree with me that corruption had gone deep to the extent that money meant for infrastructural development are being siphoned while unqualified and quackery contractors awarded contracts without thorough check.

Oladele , therefore, said the transfer of knowledge through mentoring in both the private and public domain to upcoming engineers would go along way in checkmating the gap being recorded in the profession.

Engr David Oladele, the State Chairman of Nigerian Institution of Civil Engineers (NICE) said the continuous collapsed of storey buildings especially some states can be attributed to poor quality materials used for such construction and unqualified handlers (Quacks)

He commended the Standard Organisation of Nigeria (SON) for the efforts towards ensuring that local contents or materials used by site engineers are tested ,approved and also meeting professional standards .

” We want to thank SON for going round to ensure that most of this materials used for constructions are quality ones as recommended and approved by the appropriate authorities.

” The registration council of engineers has also put in place some concepts on checkmating the issue of quackery and unqualified handlers in the system.

” The Nigerian Society of Engineers and the Nigeria Institute of Engineers have held several meetings with approving authorities to help reduced the effects of quackery and poor quality materials for buildings.

According to him, the Nigeria Civil Engineers monitoring units in the state now goes round to ensure that any building above the public or private houses were thoroughly checked to know if quality materials were used for such buildings and the engineer is also registered and qualified.

” The essence of doing this with the help of the Engineering Regulations Monitoring Units (ERMU) established by the Council for Regulation of Engineers (COREN) is to ensure that the handlers of such storey buildings are qualified kwith experience and having the backing of approved authorities”.

The Chairman further said that the ongoing efforts by (ERMU) would yield the expected results and that would help to reducing the issue of quackery to its bearest minimum and also checkmate the use of substandard materials for building.

Oladele, however, commended the institute for ensuring that the Osun State Secretariat of Chartered Civil Engineers was commissioned , being the only state with its own building and not rented .