Lagos Assures Residents Of Potable Water

Lagos State government has assured its residents of potable water.

It said the plans to resuscitate five micro and mini waterworks in the state are geared towards improving access and availability of safe, climate-resilient water in five underserved communities across the state.

Governor Babajide Sanwo-Olu disclosed this recently when he shared the details of the projects with the mission director of the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) in Nigeria, Melissa Jones, who visited himr at the State House in Marina.

The governor said the procurement process for rehabilitating the waterworks projects was underway. The bidding procedure is expected to conclude at the end of June, after which the contractors will be mobilised to the sites.

The meeting focused on evaluation of projects being jointly managed across areas of partnership.

The US agency is supporting the Lagos Urban Water, Sanitation and Hygiene (LUWASH) programme, with a five-year intervention grant to scale up capacity for the supply of safe water in five communities in Lagos.

Sanwo-Olu said the timeline for the rehabilitation of the projects would be determined after contractors would have been mobilised to sites.

The governor said ongoing restructuring being undertaken in the Lagos Water Corporation (LWC) was part of the steps by the state government to refocus the objectives of the firm towards realising its statutory mandate, stressing that the growth plan of the public corporation was to build technical capacity to meet public water demand. 

He said, “One of the areas in which we are collaborating with the USAID is water resources and sanitation. We have since identified waterworks projects within the metropolis that are strategic to our shared interests. We have since identified five micro and mini waterworks projects in underserved communities for immediate rehabilitation.

“The tender process is ongoing now, but I have given the charge to the managing director to speed up the process so that we can get to the field and our partners can see the outcome of this intervention. The effort has also led to reforms in the Lagos Water Corporation, where we have painfully downsized.’’

Jones, who was accompanied by the consul-general of the US Consulate in Lagos, Will Stevens, commended the state government’s health insurance initiative, noting that its rollout had raised the state’s rank in the development index.

 She expressed USAID’s willingness to partner and provide more support for the insurance scheme to make it better and more accessible.