Investment drive: Reviving Bayelsa Plastic Industry, not our priority

Nathan Tamarapreye, Yenagoa

The Bayelsa government has said that reviving the once thriving Bayelsa Plastics Company that employed over 1,000 workers was not its priority but rather it is working on attracting private investors.

Mr Ibiere Jones, Commissioner for Trade and Investment in an ironic stance dismissed the idea of reviving the industry and said the policy if the Gov Douye Diri-led government was interested in attracting private investors.

While Diri has been embarking on local and foreign trips in search of investors, his appointees are investing outside the state.

For instance, last week, Douye Diri commissioned the Trend Place Hotel, located in Lugbe, a suburb in the Federal Capital Territory, Abuja.

Trend’s Place Hotel and Suites is owned by Brig Gen Eric Angaye (rtd), a Security Adviser and Coordinator to Bayelsa State government.

The dilapidated state of the plastic factory which the current administration inherited in a working status in its first tenure in 2020 casts doubt about the sincerity of the government’s investment drive policy.

He said: “As a journalist, it is your duty to tell me what is happening there. I will go there and check. It is not only that work that I’m doing.

“As if it is only Bayelsa Plastic that I will focus on. We are looking for investors not all those ones. Please I’m new, give me time let me settle down.”

The factory formerly located along the Elebele area of the state has been stripped   off all the machines and the hall that once house the machines also stripped of the corrugated iron sheets which were used for the roofing.

A check last week by the Federated Correspondents’ Chapel of Nigeria Union of journalists, Bayelsa State showed that the hall initially hosting the factory was empty with nothing at on ground to show that machines were once mounted in the hall.

Also, the zinc sheets and the irons used for the building of the hall were plucked away while the premises has been taken over by weeds.

Recall, that Bayelsa Plastic Industry was established around 2010 by Timipre Sylva, former governor of the state to manufacture plastics, polytene bags and other plastic materials.

It however worked briefly during the time of Henry Dickson with more than 1000 staff. Even though, it had some challenges, but it was still functional until the current governor Douye Diri came on board in 2020 and concession the industry to a private firm who totally killed it.

This group of journalists had visited the factory sometime two years ago and met the factory in a sorry state but was surprised to see that after all the reportage and calling the attention of the government the sorry state of that factory, nothing was done until when the whole machines were looted.