World Bank’s Intervention Boosts Abia Project

World Bank’s Sustainable Urban and Rural Water Supply, Sanitation and Hygiene (SURWASH) project in Abia State has been boosted with the bank’s inclusion of the state among five others to benefit from the $700 million project.

The commissioner for Information, Okey Kanu, stated this while briefing the media on the outcome of this week’s State Executive Council meeting presided over by Governor Alex Otti in Umuahia, the capital.

His words, “The massive transformation going on in all facets of governance in the state is responsible for all the recognition from multilateral donor agencies looking our way as a state.

“The USAID Small Town WASH project, which was suspended by the American government some time ago, has resumed under a new funder. A new funder emerged through Mercy Corps.”

Kanu, who thanked the bank and expressed delight with the intervention, noted that “the USAID project will entail the rehabilitation of both Ubakala and Ariaria water schemes”.

Contributing his Power and Public Utilities counterpart, Ikechukwu Monday, said the project entails rehabilitating the water schemes to provide potable water to residents along the Ubakala and Ariaria axis. ‎ ‎”For the Ariaria water scheme, the plan is to link it to the storage at Okigwe (Aba). And you know, we’re already also working to see if, at some point, all these water schemes will be linked to provide pipe-borne water to our people. ‎

‎”If you go to Ubakala, you will also find that the contractor is already on site. So, this is a big milestone in the move to reintroduce potable water to our homes, to the people of Abia,” he said. ‎