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 Daily
Independent Online.
* Monday, July 05, 2004.
FERMA not for money making,
says minister’s aide
By Victor Ebimomi
reporter, Lagos
The Special Implementation
Assistant to the Minister of Works, Mr. David Kolawole Dakova-Vaughan has
said that the formation of the Federal Road Maintenance Agency (FERMA)
was purely for maintaining and sanitising the Federal roads rather than
for commercial purpose as it is being branded in some quarters.
Dakova-Vaughan who disclosed to Daily
Independent in an interview that his office was basically to ensure
that Federal roads are devoid of illegal squatters and occupiers
maintained that no matter the level of propaganda against it, the agency
would never be distracted from accomplishing its set objectives.
“My job is to remove all the illegal
squatters and occupiers on federal roads and to work in conjunction with
FERMA to make sure that the roads are maintained in every sphere”, he
added.
According to him FERMA activities are well
defined on the roads to the extent that even traffic control is left for
the appropriate authority, which is the Federal Road Safety Corps. “ Road
Safety takes care of traffic offences, FERMA only assist them in traffic
control”, he explained.
Giving an insight into the working of the
FERMA task force, he explained that unlike other agencies that operated
on the road before it, its men do not extort money under any guise. The
FERMA task force he noted was to enforce compliance with law and they do
this within the confines of the law even as he noted that the agency does
not collect fines but only deal with ground rent, which is the money for
using any assigned place.
“What we do is very clear. Some companies
are operating on Federal roads without the necessary documents. So we
first write them to obtain the necessary documents and once they refuse
we go there and force them to pay” he said.
Expatiating further, he said the agency as
well permit people the use of some specific places once they are ready to
pay the normal rent to the government.
“FERMA is not money making venture; once
we give you permit and you pay that is all. We can give it to anybody
including state governments”, he said stressing that once this is done
the agency would not come around to disturb your business. He pointed out
that the money so generated in such areas would still be ploughed back
into the maintenance of the roads including provision of logistics and
other necessary facilities.
On the incessant frictions between the
agency and its Lagos state counterparts, the Lagos State Traffic
Management Authority (LASTMA) and the Kick Against Indiscipline (KAI), he
stated that there have never been a time when the FERMA officials
initiated the fights but rather it has always been the other way round.
According to him the state agencies found
it utterly difficult to leave the roads “because of the extortion they
perform there” and as such they would not allow the FERMA to perform its
duties.
Dakova-Vaughan recounted that in many
occasions the agency (FERMA) officials have been attacked by men of the
state agencies just to prevent them from carrying out their duties.
While promising that the agency is
exploring ways to avoid such conflicts with the state agencies, he
expressed optimism that with the re-launching of the FRSC back to the
roads, the confrontation would soon be a thing of the past.
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