By Joe Favour
THE Delta State Oil Producing Areas Development Commission, DESOPADEC, has revealed that the commission has recovered over three hundred and eighty million naira, N380m from the blockage of human loopholes and infractions through its biometric initiatives.
Addressing newsmen after a two days media tour of projects executed by the commission in the three senatorial districts of the state, the Managing Director and Chief Executive Officer of the board, Bashorun Askia Ogieh said, “On assumption of office two years ago, the Board adopted a bottom-up model where communities in our mandate areas decides which project they need, discarding the era of imposition of projects which has been the norm.
The media tour took the selected Newsmen from the mainstream media and online media to some DESOPADEC projects across the state, most of them completed and commissioned, while some were ongoing and at various stages of completion.
The projects include, the eight kilometers Obi-Anyima road in Ika South, Opute multipurpose hall, Ozoro, Isoko North, another eight kilometer Ofagbe- Ibrede road project to link some communities in Isoko North and Ndokwa East, an ultra modern fully furnished two thousand capacity Civic Centre in Uzere, Isoko South, modern market with 94 lockup stores building projects also in Uzere, and the tripartite intervention projects, including landscaping, gate house and perimeter fencing of Urhobo House, Uvwiamuge, in Ughelli North local government area.Others are, the ongoing office development works at the Corporate Headquarters of the Commission in Warri, Warri South, Corpers lodge at Osubi, Okpe local government, multi purpose Civic Center also in Osubi, Cottage Hospital project at Agoloma, Patani, completion and fencing of examination hall at Sanctus Rosarium Catholic School also in Patani, multi purpose hall project at Obodo, Warri South, rehabilitated Obodo water scheme also in Warri South and the DESOPADEC skills acquisition center fully equipped, Omadino in Warri south local government area.
According to Askia, “Two years may seem less of a period to sound the drums in achievement in a typical business cum cooperate system and it will interest you that prior to the restructuring of the commission in 2015, staff in their usual laissez-faire attitude were being governed by their own whim and caprice.
“On coming on board we upgraded our personnel/payroll system and audit to plug loopholes of human factors and infractions,we migrated to an updated personnel payroll and biometric data system and this led to the rise in the level of transparency as it has eliminated human errors.
“Our current system enables the generation of pay slip and same transmitted to email of our staff and I can report that savings from the biometric system, over three hundred and eighty million naira have been deployed into the DESOPADEC Tower.
“The strict adherence to our corporate policy has inspired us in our service delivery agenda and we have brought DESOPADEC operations into the pigeonhole of the Delta State public service.
“We were in the trenches, albeit resilient enough to raise our heads above the waters and we have have made a remarkable feat in service delivery mandate as our job consist the redressing these inadequacies in a most creative ambience.
“We came on board with some low hanging fruits and long term projects including the tangibles and intangibles and we have been delivering to our mandate areas”. Ogieh reveals.
