“We also notice that when people get approval from town planning board for building house that is over a storey building, they will go and build two or three storey buildings and when the house finally collapse, they apportion blames on the government. These are human factors! Thus, we have decided to embark on law enforcement for defaulters, because where there’s no law, there’s no offense. That’s why we are enforcing laws for deltans to comply with the state building code”
These are parts of the outburst of the Honorable Commissioner for Urban Renewal, Delta State, Chief (Barr) Arthur Akpowowo, who spoke to Daniel Njienue, Head of News and Strategy of Afrikanwatch Network at the Commissioners’ lodge in Asaba recently.
Barr. Akpowowo-August 26, 2020, Interviews/Comments
Excerpts
Urban Renewal
The Ministry of Urban Renewal was created in 2016 from the Ministry of land, Survey and Urban development by his Excellency, Governor Ifeanyi Okowa. The purpose then was to have a Ministry that will plan for Urban and Rural Development in the state.
Meanwhile, what we do in Urban renewal is to plan development both in rural and urban settlement. For now, the Ministry is focusing more on redevelopment and redesign; turning slums across the state into beautiful environment. Our duty is to turn them around and make sure people feel comfortable and live while also invoking rural rules and urban rules linking streets and communities together to be able to drive.
The State Urbanisation strategy
The concept of urbanization has gone beyond cities, when you develop cities and leave the rural areas. Certainly, you create rural drift, and people will start leaving rural environment to urban areas, thereby creating problems for those cities because the facilities will become overstretched and cannot accommodate large people. So when you are developing urban areas, you also consciously remember the rural areas. In our own little way, we have done a lot of work irrespective of limited resources.
Code for building in the state
But so far, we are building codes for people to build in different specifications so as to coherent with the environment. We also notice that when people get approval from town planning board for building house that is over a storey building, they will go and build two or three storey buildings and when the house finally collapse, they apportion blames on the government. These are human factors! Thus, we have decided to embark on law enforcement for defaulters, because where there’s no law, there’s no offense. That’s why we are enforcing laws for deltans to comply with the state building code.
And anyone who refuses will definitely be prosecuted by the government to pay a certain fine. So to renew our environment, everybody must take part in it for the betterment of our cities with constant sensitization through the social media, as a renew urban development can be achieved in Delta State.
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