The Permanent Secretary, Federal Ministry of Housing and Urban Development, Dr. Shuaib Belgore, has revealed the ministry’s plan to create a task team in every state to ensure proper audits of the ministry’s properties and land across the federation, as well as look into the collection of ground rent on those properties.
This was disclosed on the ministry’s website recently.
Belgore stated this during his interactive session with the 36 states and FCT Federal Controllers of Housing, held at the Ministry’s Headquarters in Abuja.
“The task team will include the controller in every state, representatives from the state and Federal Housing Authority, with the Surveyor-General of the Federation as the Chairman of the Task Team.”
He assured them of his readiness to provide them with the resources needed to execute their jobs so that they would not have an excuse for not doing them correctly, adding that a portion of the revenue will be retained for fieldwork and evaluation.
On the relevance of the assignment, he stated that “field audits and professional oversight will ensure quality and efficiency,” stressing that the importance of regular field supervision and open communication by the controllers would provide needed updates to the headquarters on state-level activities.
While tasking the states’ controllers on teamwork for the ministry to be effective in the discharge of its mandate, he described teamwork, hard work, and quality in project execution as essential elements to achieving successes.
“The ministry’s effectiveness depends significantly on the collaboration and dedication of its state housing controllers,” he stated.
He acknowledged the vital role of the Federal Controllers in coordinating the ministry’s projects in the states and ensuring their seamless execution.
Accordingly, the permanent secretary highlighted “the necessity of hands-on field experience, noting that effective project management cannot be learnt in an office setting but rather through active engagement on project sites, informing that their task would include training and mentoring of new officers when the time comes.”
While expressing concern over the ministry’s human capacity challenges, given that many officers were close to retirement, he said that the ministry was planning to engage experienced professionals and implement training and mentoring programmes of which the Federal Controllers will be involved in field training due to their wealth of experience.
On their part, the Federal Controllers requested the Ministry to renew the contracts of facility managers for projects in the states to avoid being vandalised by miscreants.
Earlier, the Director of Human Resources in the Ministry, Akinola Adeshina, said the meeting summoned at the behest of the Permanent Secretary was to ensure synergy between the headquarters and Federal Controllers.
