Musa Musa Ubandawaki
Sokoto State Government says it releases over N140m million Monthly to the State Water Board for the purchase of diesel, chemicals, general maintenance and water treatment.
The General Manager of the State Water Board, Alhaji Ismaila Sanda Umar disclosed this to Stallion Times correspondent in an interview in Sokoto, noting that the releases has helped the board achieved tremendous success in maintaining constant supply of portable drinking water to the public in the state metropolis.
He said the financial support extended to the board also enabled it to carry repairs, thorough maintenances and water production for commercial and domestic consumption.
“The Government is spending over N140million monthly in the running of water facilities as a part of its social responsibility support to the public,” Umar said.
He also noted that the state Government had expended huge sums of money in completing some inherited water projects from the immediate past state administration across the state for the benefit of the populace.
According to him, the completion of abandoned water projects in Gagi and Runjin Sambo areas cost the state Government over N500 million to complete the abandoned works.
He explained that the ongoing two million galoons surface water tank at Old Market which has reached 80% completion cost over N78 million, while the board also drilled five new large boreholes to ease the hardship encountered by the residence of Gwiwa and Gawon Nama areas due to increase in population.
The Manager further stated that the board replaced new pipeline in Madunka, Sharifai quarters along Rima Radio,Tudun Wada, Mabera and Line G in Sama road areas of the state capital among others.
He said the board had conducted a customer enumeration exercise, using software global positioning (IGPS) to boost its revenue generations and also track and disconnect the defaulting customers.
He acknowledged that the board is witnessing challenges in the cause of discharging its legitimate responsibilities, which according to him includes pipelines blockages in the distribution lines as some were underground for over 40 years.
He complained that a majority of people who are out of civil service are not paying water bills regularly, even though the board is charging only N300 monthly, that is N10 daily, which is very cheap compared with that of water vendors (Dan Baro), who are selling at not less than N200 par barrow and would eventually cost a customer over 9000 naira monthly.
“With recent development of IGPS and sofware billings, the moment payment is made, it will appear and show in the agency computer records” says the general manager.
He assured that the moment the newly introduced customer enumeration system is maintain the leakage in revenue collection would be reduce drastically.
He urged people in the state to support the efforts of the board by giving Information of water leakages in their respective domains for immediate action and reduce wastages of water.
