Delta N479b budget is to complete ongoing projects in 2022 -Aniagwu

The Delta State Commissioner for Information, Mr Charles Aniagwu has said that the State Government’s 2022 budget of N479 billion was aimed at completing all ongoing projects across the state.

The Commissioner who stated this on ChannelsTV live programme monitored in Asaba, on Monday, said the Okowa administration would take advantage of the 2022 budget, being the last full-year budget, to complete major ongoing projects across the state.

According to him, road construction, building of schools, hospitals, job creation among other things were top priorities in the 2022 budget.

“In 2022, we shall focus more attention on road construction building and expanding facilities in our schools and hospitals and these expenditures would take a larger chunk of the capital side of the budget while the recurrent will largely remain what it has been.

“We will be completing a number of key roads, the dualisation of Asaba to Ughelli and Interchange at Koka Junction Asaba, Beneku bridge, Orerhe bridge as well as other community roads being constructed.

“In terms of schools, we are going to expand facilities, particularly the building of more classroom blocks, across the 25 local government areas.

“The same applies to a number of hospitals being constructed and we also have three new universities that we established last year and we are expanding the facilities in these universities,” Aniagwu said.

On Job Creation, the Information Commissioner said the state government remained committed to the expansion of its job creation programmes to enable more Deltans to benefit from the numerous schemes in the state.

“We are continuing with our job creation programmes because the Governor has increased the number of intakes that we have annually, so in 2022, more Deltans would benefit from the state’s empowerment programmes.

“A number of these issues would be tackled in 2022. 2022 is not an accident because we already know the year will come and that it’s going to be the last full year of our being in office.

“A whole lot of plans went into the 2022 budget before it became law having passed through the crucibles of legislation in the House of Assembly,” he stated.

On COVID-19, Aniagwu said a total of 4,991 confirmed cases have been recorded in the state out of which the state lost 110 persons while a total of over 4,800 persons have been successfully treated since the pandemic started in the state.

“Luckily for us, we have not recorded any death to the new variants and we pray it remains so.

“In terms of vaccination we are number six in the country and number one in the Niger Delta and our aspiration is to be number one in the country having vaccinated about 12.7 per cent of the total population expected to be vaccinated as a state.

“What we are doing now to bring down the number of infected persons in the state is that we are continuing with the rapid diagnostic test across the 25 local government areas, a minimum of four centres in each of the local government areas,”

He said the state government was also engaging private hospitals to collaborate with government hospitals in the treatment of COVID-19.

“At the moment we are not having very severe cases and the isolation centres are not the way they were at the beginning of the pandemic in 2020 and we are also improving on sensitisation because the Omicron variant doesn’t present the kind of symptoms that we saw at the advent of the COVID-19.

“A whole lot of them that has tested positive to the Omicron variant are actually asymptomatic hence we are emphasising on the non-pharmaceutical measures like regular wearing of face mask, maintaining physical distances, and regular hand washing.

“So far we are improving on our vaccination and we hope to surpass a number of states that are ahead of us,” Aniagwu stated.