Minister of Niger Delta Affairs, Pastor Usani Usani has come under fire from contractors handling jobs for the Niger Delta Development Commission, NDDC, for allegedly failing to respond to their appeal for his urgent intervention to resolve challenges they face at the commission.
The contractors, who spoke Thursday in Port Harcourt, Rivers State, on the platform of Contractors Association of Niger Delta Development Commission, said they had earlier wrote to the Minister on July 26 this year, lamenting their pains and sought his intervention, adding that two months down, nothing concrete had been done to their letter.
Mr. Joe Adia who is the president of the body noted that the letter they wrote the Minister was also addressed to the Managing Director of NDDC, Mr. Nsima Ekere, adding that the letter should not exceed 48 hours on his desk, expressing regret that most of them were suffering the pain of non- payment for the jobs they had already executed.
He said: “There is no hope for NDDC contractors. We have reached the Minister of Niger Delta Affairs, but he is not helping matters. He is acting as if it is not an urgent matter. To us, it is urgent because the contractors are dying. We are not seeing the effort of the Minister. You cannot treat contractors’ issues in the absence of the contractors.
“We intend to have a television programme starting next week to showcase the challenges faced by NDDC contractors. We are also going to reach out to communities to alert us of abandoned projects in their areas so that we can note them,” he said.
The contractors said in their letter to the Managing Director of NDDC, that they were also demanding that they should be granted unhindered access to the commission, while the Finance Department “should produce a comprehensive list of all the contractors owed, in order of first come, in five days .”
