Gombe — Months after the Federal Government announced the establishment and citing of the export handling, preservation and conditioning centres in six states including Gombe, the contractors are yet to mobilise to site.

Also, the large expanse of land allocated by the state government for the project is yet to be cleared.

THISDAY investigations revealed that in order to facilitate quick execution of the project because of its benefit to the people of the state, Gombe state Governor, Alhaji Muhammad Danjuma Goje, approved the immediate release of 20 hectares of land along Bauchi road adjacent to the Gombe International Airport.

It was further gathered that the project, which is to cost the sum of over N400 million, is being done under the supervision of the Federal Ministry of Agriculture to help preserve perishables including vegetables, tomatoes and others, so that they can be used as at when due with the aim of increasing revenue generation for farmers in that sector.

A visit to the site did not give any sign to indicate that something is going on, a development that is presently worrying residents of the area who have been relocated from their farmlands at a time they said that needed such most for farming.

All efforts to get officials at the state office of the Federal Ministry of Agriculture to comment on the issue proved abortive as no one was ready to say anything; just as some of them simply directed THISDAY to Abuja for authoritative comments. Also efforts to get anyone who has contact with the contractors, Messrs Westcom Technologies, proved abortive.

At the Gombe state Ministry of Agriculture, which is supposed to work with the Federal Ministry for the success of the project, no one was ready to talk under the pretence that it is a Federal Government project only sited in the state, while all efforts to get the Commissioner in charge of the Ministry, David Albashi, did not yield any positive result.

The last time THISDAY visited the Ministry to see the Commissioner, a top staff who pleaded anonymity disclosed that, the Ministry has done everything humanly and administratively possible to get a feedback from Abuja, but nothing has been done; assuring however that efforts will be intensified until the project was done.