The Managing Director/CEO, Federal Roads Maintenance Agency (FERMA), Engr. Nuruddeen A. Rafindadi FNSE, has expressed FERMA’s commitment in ensuring total compliance to the principles of service delivery while discharging the Agency’s mandate.
Engr. Rafindadi made this remarks while receiving a team of SERVICOM evaluators from SERVICOM National Secretariat, led by Mrs. Ugochukwu Ijeoma at the Agency’s headquarters on Wednesday, 9th September, 2020.
The MD in his remarks commended the team for carrying out the directives of the Presidency on the ease of doing business and promoting transparency and efficiency in the business Environment. He said “the Agency knows the importance of service delivery in the ease of doing business and as such will continue to be transparent and ensure that quality service delivery is not hampered in anyway”.
Engr. Rafindadi explained that FERMA is charged with the responsibility to monitor and maintain Federal roads across the country. He disclosed that “We have about 200,000km of roads in Nigeria and only 36,000km are federal roads, the remaining roads are under the purview of the State and Local Governments. The Agency sometimes goes out of its mandate to work on some of these roads based on compassionate request especially if it is an emergency”.
According to him, all roads in the federal institutions and federal teaching hospitals are not the responsibility of FERMA to maintain but often times we work on some of these roads when we get passionate appeal from the institutions that have dilapidated access roads.
He however bemoaned poor funding as a major factor limiting the concerted efforts the Agency is making to keep the federal roads safe and motorable across the nation.
Rafindadi stressed that the Agency has a robust Public Relations strategy, traditional and strong new social media presence which it has been using to publicise the activities of the Agency, adding that in the last two years, the Agency has been running a 30 minutes documentary programme “eye on the road” every Saturdays on NTA Network and International by 10pm to showcase the activities and intervention works of the Agency. All these media strategies also serve as a means of feedback to the Agency.
Responding, the Team leader, Mrs. Ugochukwu stated that the purpose of the evaluation exercise was to carry out a survey to ascertain the present state of service compliance delivery of the Agency and to interact with the Management and staff. She added that the exercise was aimed at exposing service delivery gaps and making recommendations to MDAs to improve customer satisfaction and accountability while at the same time serving as a wakeup call to all MDAs to improve on services they render to citizens with the aim of increased satisfaction.
Mrs. Ugochukwu commended the Agency for complying with the principles of service delivery while admonishing the Agency to further strengthen its media campaign on enlightening the public on the roads under its jurisdiction to avoid misconception of the Agency’s mandate.
She disclosed that the evaluation exercise amongst other things includes, visiting the Agency’s zonal and some selected field offices; visiting some identified federal roads; interacting with stakeholders, transporters and road users to share their experiences and challenges faced while plying the roads.
Maryam M. Sanusi (Mrs.)
Deputy Director (Information)
10th September, 2020
