A Civil Society Organization, Voice to the people, V2P, has urged citizens at various communities to get involved in monitoring projects which are carried out by the federal, state or local governments for efficiency.
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Dr. Uzochukwu A, Senior Research Fellow, Institute for Developmental Studies, University of Nigeria, Enugu Campus made the plea during a chat involving the Media and the Civil Society Organization, trained Imo Project Watch Team, held at De Legend Hotel, Owerri, recently.
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Uzochukwu explained that Voice to the People stands for rights of the poor, being a Christian Aid Project for the less-privileged, noting that V2P is bent on empowering citizens to better their lives especially in the areas of agriculture, skills and entrepreneurship, etc, saying Federal (Capital) Projects as health, agriculture, road/bridges, erosion control, rural electrification must not be allowed in the hands of government, contractors for monitoring and completion, and hence charged the people to hold their leaders, representatives accountable so that projects sited will be completed and put to use.
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Ugochukwu is of the belief that when the people stand boldly and ask questions of how and when their projects are going to be completed and put to use, tell government of what they want, the better for them in terms of development, stating that “the right to hear and see what is happening at your community, is the right to life”. He regretted that many Federal Government Projects are abandoned, some completed, but not being put to use while many contractors do half-done projects which do not last and sometimes pose danger on people’s lives, encouraging constituents to hold their representatives accountable on project siting, implementation, completion and use.
While Mrs. Egodi Igwe, of WACOL, added that the essence of the presentation is to do Findings/Validation of 2019 Projects Monitoring in Imo State, saying it started by training Imo Watch Team on Projects Monitoring, who she said were on ground to report their findings in the field, stressing that WACOL also tends to inform people to show interest of any project government is doing for them, just as they also tell government what they want and not keeping mute.
The Imo Watch Project Monitoring, presented that some of the projects sited by government in Imo State are completed, but are not put to use, some projects abandoned, while some are done with inferior materials. Though they expressed happiness over interest shown by some representatives in doing and completing projects at their constituencies.
