The impending Water Supply and Sanitation Policy of Ekiti State will boost clean water supply for the needs of the people, an official of the state’s water corporation, Mr. Olatunji Femi, said in Abuja last Wednesday.
Mr Femi, a senior hydrologist at the corporation, who is also a monitoring and evaluation officer in the Urban Water Sector Reform Programme of the state, told newsmen that Ekiti State had undertaken a review of the sector to upgrade its facilities.
“The state government, led by Dr Kayode Fayemi, at the inception went straight into carrying out a diagnostic review of the water sector.
“Water sector is a priority and he discovered that the essential framework were not even on ground, the legal framework and the institutional framework- this probably accounted for why there was poor service delivery before then.
“So he decided that there was need for a policy. They were able to put heads together and gave the state a water and sanitation implementation guideline.
“The draft law has undergone public hearing; first reading, second reading and public hearing so it’s going to be passed into law.
“They may be pushing other states to get a law but we, without being pushed, believed this is for development.
“In fact when you look at the budgetary allocation for 2013 on water, it’s about 128 per cent increase over that of 2012, this is telling you the seriousness of the state government.
“So with this everybody knows that this government is quite different and then we discovered that even the revenue being generated before now was not much so the state government went into metering.
“We have started doing that now, we are trying to meter our network in strategic places now and we will begin to see money being generated from this although we intend to improve on it over the years.
“What we need is sustainability to be able to sustain even the operating and maintenance cost, we should be able to generate it it’s not that the government will be doing everything for us.”
Femi added that for sustainability of operations of the water board in the state, autonomy of the agency was required to ensure effectiveness.
“The area of giving the state agency complete autonomy in the sense that whatever we generate for now we spend on operating cost and maintenance.
“But I think that we need full autonomy whereby you can hire people that you really want, technically-skilled people.
“We want to see that it is strictly adhered to so that there will not be political interference, let there be technically-skilled people, let us have the autonomy to even fire if you cannot perform.
“The government does not intend to sack anybody but at least if people are told that if they don’t perform they will be fired, they want to put in more efforts, so I think autonomy is the key.”
The Tide reports that the objective of the Ekiti Water Supply and Sanitation Policy is to improve water supply service coverage from the present 40 per cent to 60 per cent by 2014.
It also aims at extending water supply service coverage to 80 per cent of the population by 2016 and100 per cent by 2020.
For sanitation, it covers the improvement of services from the present 32 per cent to 50 per cent by 2014 and further extends it to 60 per cent by 2016; 80 per cent by 2018 and 100 per cent by 2020.
The policy goals were developed based on the state’s Development Strategy Plan 2011-2014 for Water and Sanitation.
It is done in line with the current realities in social service delivery and coherent with the National Water Supply and Sanitation Policy.