By BARBARA KALU –
The Mayor of Housing, MY-ACE China, has commended the flag-off of the Port Harcourt Ring Road project by the governor of Rivers State, Sir Sim Fubara, describing it as striking a hot rod on time.
The real estate success strategist also said the N200Bn Ring Road would directly boost the governor’s earlier mentioned social housing dream, saying such housing scheme would only be located at the outskirts of the state capital which would require a road network plan such as the Ring Road.
Simply put, he said the Ring Road project and the Social Housing scheme have a lot in common, thus seen as well-thought out.
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The Mayor of Housing was reacting to the flag-off which he said came early in the life of the Sir Fubara administration.
He said in an interview with newsmen in Port Harcourt that it is known anywhere that access road is almost 80 per cent of all that is required to build a new city. The ring road this is the right first cord.
“The next two quick things are to ensure that all internal roads are good and motorable; and that there are bridges to link all cavities of the city. If this ring road can be followed up by internal roads and linkage bridges, believe me, Port Harcourt is on its way back to the Garden City status because no city can develop and compete without linkage roads.
“Also, the choice of contractor they have made is important for such a big-ticket construction task. The contractor is high quality and the road is expected to be high quality.”
The Mayor of Housing said everyone knows that roads drive the economic growth of any entity or region because goods and humans migrate seamlessly to boost economic growth. “Truly, I am impressed. The early take-off of the gigantic project shows that the governor’s intentions for infrastructural development and housing are serious; ring road, internal roads, linkage bridges.”
He also mentioned other things that would boost the development of the city through housing as ease of doing business, ease to land titles, ease of approvals, ease of paperwork by government to developers, etc.
“The next is collaboration with developers to ensure a proper public private partnership (PPPP) development system so that the projects have self-sustaining, self-auditing, and self-duplicating features already imbedded ab initio so they do not die when the administration that initiated it goes. Proper PPP has three things: self-auditing, self-sustaining, and self-duplicating mechanisms. That way, they are able to live out the test of time.
“So, today is a wonderful dawn for Rivers State. Thus, Rivers will begin to experience a new wave of traffic decongestion. Most people that have nothing to do in the city will traverse off the city.”
Mr China said the big traffic buildups that disturb the city are from Ikwerre Road, Aba Road and East West Road. Most of it is traffic not having anything in the city centre but just passing through the city. They now have to go through the Ring Road.
He went on: “Remember we had earlier said one of the things that must be done to aid social housing (which the governor wants to implement) is to open up the city and have roads that connect to the outskirts of the city.
“This way, we can see that decongesting of Port Harcourt has begun. The governor has shown commitment and intent. I am very elated. I can’t wait to have the garden city return to its garden city status and begin to reduce the dichotomy between Port Harcourt and Lagos.
“With proper infrastructure, investors will return to the region and those that ‘japaed’ would return and the economy of the region will be better for it. It will help bring back fleeing investors into the region and when they come back, the economy of the zone will be better for it.”
He enumerated the gains of the upcoming social housing scheme if it would be prosecuted in partnership with tested and pre-qualified estate developers in the state.
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