The Ministry of budget and National planning , is not happy at the execution of projects appropriated in the 2016 budget for the murtala Muhammad airport Lagos.
Minister of state, budget and National planning, Mrs. Zainab Ahmed during an inspection of the Airport said some of the projects marked to have reached an appreciable stage were nothing compared to what is on ground.
The first port of call of the minister of state of budget and National planning Mrs zainab Ahmed was the Lagos international airport were she inspected the upgrade and rehabilitation of the terminal Building, the E and D fingers phase 2/3, transit lounge as well as the refurbishment of the passenger processing area.
Fielding questions from reporters after a tour of the projects, the minister explained that the purpose of the visit was to see how well government resources were utilized and also to assess the challenges facing the airport.
She made it clear that future disbursements of resources for projects would be done based on the purpose for which they would be used.
“The reason why we are here is to inspect the projects under FAAN. The essence of this is to see how well government’s resources are utilized. To also see and understand the challenges that the airport is facing so that when resources are to be allocated or disbursed, we will do it with the understanding of how they are to be used”,
On the level of on-going projects at the airport, the Minister said “We have seen a number of projects at different levels of completion. We have seen a lot of good work that has been done. There are some projects that are suffering as a result of number of different challenges. We have also seen the upgrade of the airport that shows an improvement in users experience, especially on the arrival of the MMIA”.
While commending the execution of projects to improve on travellers’ experience at the arrival hall, the minister said more work still needed to be done in the departure area citing the luggage handling process as problematic as the process was still manual.
“we need to do a lot of work to upgrade the departure area of the airport. The luggage handling process is very problematic. It is largely manual and as a result of that, customers spend hours before getting their luggage. That needs to be addressed”.
She however noted that some information provided regarding certain project completion did not tally with what she has seen, as the percentage of completion was still a far cry from the expected percentage.
“On the inspection, we found out that some of the information provided tallies with what we have but some do not. We are asking the authority to re-assess them and submit to us the correct state of completion. The completion rate of some of the projects were lower than what was reported in the reports.
Other projects inspected included the rehabilitation and asphalt resurfacing of the runway apron and reconstruction and upgrade the protocol lounge of the General aviation terminal one at the local airport
