Apparently determined to make government infrastructure live out their life span, the Federal Housing Authority, (FHA) has finalized plans set up a facility management agency that will be charged with the maintenance of roads and other social infrastructure in federal housing estates nationwide.
Speaking with a news agency, the Managing Director of FHA, Prof. Mohammed Al-Amin, recently in Abuja said
that another arm of the FHA is being created, just like the mortgage bank that is marketing the houses and creating mortgages.
“It will be responsible for the maintenance of all facilities, utilities and services in federal housing estates nationwide.
“This is one of the important points that the current FHA Board of Directors looked into immediately after it was inaugurated, and approval was given to use the facility management company,’’ Al-Amin said.
He was responding to complaints by residents of Nyanya and Lugbe Federal Housing Estates in the Federal Capital Territory (FCT) over the “deplorable state of roads’’ in the areas. The FHA boss, who acknowledged the plight of the residents, blamed the situation on lack of maintenance plan by the agency before now.
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He said, “before now, our estates did not have maintenance plan; FHA was just building houses and leaving them for the residents to take care of. “If you allow individual residents to dig their boreholes, raise their electric poles, take care of their drains, security, and to maintain the roads, you are not being fair to them.
“So, we have earmarked some resources for immediate intervention before the take-off of the facility management company. In the next two weeks, work will begin in earnest in Karu and Lugbe FHA estates; we have money earmarked in the budget for infrastructure project to commence in Lugbe,’’ Al-Amin said.
The agency was told by residents of Nyanya that the government had virtually abandoned the estate since the houses were sold to private individuals several years ago. One of them, Mr Isaac Ighure, a retired civil servant,
said all the roads in the estate had been taken over by craters, making them not passable.
Ighure, who is a landlord in the estate, said residents were also grappling with erosion problem during the rainy
season due to lack of drainage, and dust during the dry season.