LSPWC Website…Surely Not A Metaphor

THE Lagos State Public Works Corporation (LSPWC) is an example of how to hit the ground running in every sense of the word. While the Ambode-led administration is still in its infancy, the agency’s machines, pickaxes and shovels will hit the ground and run along 90 Lagos roads slated for rehabilitation.

The agency, last week, reeled out the names of the roads it said it would repair across the state.

On its online page, it boasts: “This website is a cardinal aspect of a renewed effort to serve the public better by further bridging the communication gap. It is hoped that as you take advantage of the interactive features of this site, the feedback generated can effectively contribute to helping the Corporation perform its tasks better.”

But sadly, had any resident of the state, as at Thursday, July 2, 2015, hoped to “take advantage of the interactive features” of the platform, such would have been disappointed. The customer care lines – 0709 810 7021,
0702 332 6147 and 0819 040 9880 were unresponsive. A mail enquiry sent 3pm Wednesday, July 1, 2015 had neither been acknowledged nor responded to as at Saturday, July 4, 2015.

The reason for the above might have been explained by the site’s intro: “As an agency of Government, the Corporation competes with other organs of the state for funds from the consolidated Revenue. Since the state’s resources are finite, it has become a crucial philosophy of the Corporation to find ways of maximising its human and material resources.”

In these times when states can’t pay ‘ordinary’ worker’s salaries, and some are even telling wage earners to go and eat ponmo, and a whole Centre of Excellence has to borrow a N39.4bn loan, who then has money to waste on frivolities, talk little of updating an ‘ordinary’ website?

Believing more in action, LSPWC will rather have Lagosians hear the thud of its equipment as they hit the ground than sound its trumpet on some www.lspwc-ng.com.

To avoid distractions from members of the public or even fend off abduction of its General Manager, Engineer Ayotunde Sodeinde, by aggrieved road users and frenzied complainants, the agency wisely decided to keep the identity of its boss away from the site, preferring instead a silhouette of some fine-looking nobody.

Its last news section update (February 24, 2014!) reads ‘LSPWC’s New Imota Plant Opens – The new Imota Asphalt Plant of the Lagos State Public Works Corporation was Thursday commissioned by His Excellency the Governor of Lagos State, Mr. Babatunde Raji Fashola (SAN) amid fanfare.’

Need more be said?