The Council of Maritime Unions and Associations (COMTUA) said it has so far has sum of N1.08Millon within one week to fill the pot holes on the approach to Tin Can Island ports.
The association said that it bought six tippers of stones at the rate of N180,000 each.
The Head of Operations of COMTUA, Alhaji Abdullahi Inuwa, who gave this explanation in a chat with Shipping Position Daily at Tin-Can yesterday also accused the contractors working on the Tin Can axis of selling the rubble excavated from the gutters.
Inuwa said that the act was an indirect extortion of the truckers by the contractors which according to him, is against the initial promise given to them by the contractors that palliatives would be used to fill alternative routes while the construction is going on.
He told our correspondent that: “Right now, we are waiting for some stones we bought to fill some portions and we bought a tipper of it at N180,000 and so far we have got about six trips”.
On the alleged ale of rubbles, he said, “we have sighted rubbles which the ministry of works was excavating right from the Tin-Can second gate from Liverpool which we feel can be useful to fill all those pot holes. We went there to ask for some which we wanted to use to fill the pot holes and they said no, it is under the ministry of works and they cannot allow us to take any except if we want to buy”.
“And we have called the person in charge at the place to assist us with it and the person insisted we should wait for the contractor where we have seen the rubbles which can be used to fill the pot holes and prevent truck from falling off”, he explained further.
Meanwhile, an attempt to speak with one of the officials from the Federal Ministry of Works (names withheld) as at the time of filling this report was not fruitful.
When called by our correspondent she said she was not the right person to talk about the matter.
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