The Federal Road Maintenance Agency (FERMA) says plans are underway to fill up potholes and intervene in the repair of failed roads nationwide as the rainy season sets in.

The acting managing director of FERMA, Godson Amos, made this known in an interview on Sunday in Abuja.

According to him, the intervention was necessitated because of the need to ameliorate the daily hardship and delays road users face.

“Our engineers in the field offices have already carried out a route condition survey of the federal roads and have identified all critical failures like road embankments washout and failed carriageway section for the agency to take action,” he said.

He was optimistic that the intervention would be achieved within six weeks of the commencement, and all potholes and road failures worked on federal roads across the country.

The FERMA boss said he had gotten reports of deplorable federal roads across the country, causing many inconveniences to road users.

He added that these failures have hampered economic activities due to the inability of the people to move goods from one place to the other freely.

Mr Amos maintained that the roads were deplorable due to rainfall, overloading and traffic.

“Also, excessive traffic, overloading of vehicles coupled with the age of the roads are other factors that have contributed to the dilapidation of the federal roads.

“This hinders the free flow of traffic, causing colossal damages to vehicles, wastages of productive man hours and huge discomfort to road users,” Mr Amos said.

Regarding how the agency would executive this intervention, Mr Amos said direct labour would be deployed by engaging skilled and unskilled youths in the communities.

He further said appraisals had been made, including assessing works requirements and estimating resources like men, materials and machines that would be deployed to achieve the most cost-effective result.

The FERMA boss, however, said funding was a challenge in maintaining the 36,000 kilometres of federal highways all year round.

(NAN)