The Special Adviser to Zamfara state Governor on Urban and Planning Board Comr. Anas Abdullahi Kaura has cried that the state ministry of housing has refused to hand over the Gusau township streetlight to their board for daily maintenance.

Comr. Anas Kaura who stated this during a Press Conference on Tuesday insisted that, despite securing approval of the Executive Governor for the housing ministry to hand over the completed project of streetlight, the ministry for housing has refused to act on the instruction of the Governor.

He stated that as at now, the there are over (600) units of stand-alone streetlight that has one technical default or another which the ministry has refused to fix despite several notices issued to them by both the ZUREPB and indeed the public.

“We have written severally to the Ministry of Housing and Urban Development to release the streetlights to us for the routine maintenance as instructed by the Governor, but the Ministry is yet to act on the instruction of the Governor for reason best known to us and I believed they knew they are wrong for refusing to abide by the instruction of the Governor”.

“It is unfortunate that, most of the streetlights in Gusau are not functioning, and the ministry is not doing anything to fix it. We have over (500) units of the streetlights that are not functioning and yet nothing is done to secure the savings made by the government although”.

“In ZUREPB we have department electrical and mechanical and its statutory function was to ensure routine maintenance of the government investment such as the streetlight but our vehicle that was procured by the government for that purpose and the staff in that department are left to nothing due to the selfish interests of the Housing Ministry”.

“The ministry keep telling us that the contractor handling the streetlight project is yet to hand over it to the government and for that reason, maybe they have to hide under it to refuse to hand it over to ZUREPB as the appropriate body responsible for managing it by law”.

He called on the appropriate authorities to intervene by compelling the Housing Ministry to respect the instruction by the Governor.