By Adedapo Adesanya
The federal government has announced the suspension of the ongoing reconstruction work at the Akanu Ibiam International Airport in Enugu State due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
This disclosure was made by the Minister of Aviation, Mr Hadi Sirika, when he gave a mandatory inspection tour of the project on Tuesday.
He arrived the airport aboard a police helicopter with only few officials to inspect and announce the suspension in person.
Mr Sirika said the project which had been scheduled to be delivered before Easter had gone beyond 90 percent completion.
“Considering that the construction workers have downed tools owing to the COVID-19 pandemic, the federal government hereby officially announce suspension of procurement.
“We had planned to surmount this problem; we had pushed as far as we can to defeat this problem and to deliver this project by Easter.
“We were on our way to achieving that, we needed only seven days to deliver this project unfortunately, the workers based on the advice of their families abandoned site,” the minister declared.
“As much as we would have loved to continue and deliver before Easter, we think that life is much more important. What we are trying to do here is to save life and create a new environment for safe operations and we will not in the process also lose other lives.
“The workers have taken the decision themselves, the governors of the southeast region had had dialogue with them, the company, PW even though it had closed worldwide was willing to continue, we in the ministry were willing but in view of this, the workers said it is extremely difficult for them to continue with social distancing and in the circumstance, we will wait until the monster is conquered,” Mr Sirika added.
The aviation minister explained that effort had been put to overcome challenges since the airport was closed to traffic in 2019.
He stated that with the approval and release of the initial N10 billion by President Muhammadu Buhari, issues like quarry dust, asphalt, Bitumen, glass mesh for the runway, radio mast and relocation of a market were done to meet stated deadline before the unexpected pandemic pushed back plans.
The Minister then appealed for understanding on the part of the people of the Southeast Zone and expressed the hope that the issues would be resolved in two to three weeks time.
