Engr. Ernest Usoro is the Managing Director of Akwa Ibom Water Company Limited. He presented a budget of N4 billion on reticulation projects to the State House of Assembly recently with a vow to make water available to residents in the state. He spoke with journalists shortly after the budget presentation and defense. FRANCIS OGAR, reports.
What has been your challenge to render efficient services to the state?
Power supply used to pose a great threat for us to give Nigerians adequate water supply. Right now, it has improved and we have started to produce water for Nigerians. The other major problem is reticulation. By that I mean, pipe lines distribution are destroyed by road construction works going on every where.
Any time government wants to expand the road, it will surely affect utilities, power supply, the poles, Nitel, and water pipelines. Most of the time that the roads are constructed our pipes are effected and I can show you bills that I sent to the contractors.
The contractors have not given me one kobo to repair these pipes. What I do is to get back to government to say these pipe lines are damaged and we cannot supply water to the public.
What is the thrust of 2015 Budget?
In 2015, my budget proposal is to continue pipeline reticulation in the state and all major towns.
The major towns are Uyo, Ikot Ekpene, Eket, Abak, Itu, Oron, Etinan and Ikot Abasi. A proposal is to lay a total of 1000kl of pipelines in all these towns mentioned.
The pipes will be all over the streets so that we can get water from our pumping stations and deliver to the door steps of the people. Now, because water is no more a social commodity, people were not asked to pay. Now treated water is an economic commodity because we used money to produce this treated water. We need the consumers to pay so that we can sustain the system. People have to pay water rates. In this part of the country, it is may be difficult to get people to have their water rates, leave their houses to pay their bills at the water boards.
We need to meet our consumption so that we can give the consumer a fair price. We don’t just bill the consumers anyhow. Let the consumer pay as he or she consumers so that we can incorporate distribution of metric system in the 2015 budget.
That I mean, we are going to metre the system, but I am only going to meter the areas that are organized.
Such as Ewet Housing where we have people that are organized living there. Let people pay as they use like Usongama Estate, Shelter Afrique, and Ebihere Heaven. These are the areas we will start with the installation of the metre system. We have made provision for the 16000 metres to cover these areas in the 2015 budget. We have also noticed that our head works are also depleted.
We need to rehabilitate them because any house that you build and it stays about 10 years need to be maintained because we want to bring up these head works sites. So we have made a provision of N200 million to rehabilitate these in the state budget for this year.
There are two urban sites in Akwa Ibom State which have lacked water for a very long time. These urban centres are Ikono and Ukanafun. The facilities there have not been working for some time now.
The boreholes, the pipe lines, petroleum plant system have not been working and the consumers living within the areas have been calling me that we should do something, but the funds are not there, so we made a provision of 100 million to the state government.
If that money is released to us, we can rehabilitate the pumping stations in Ikono and Ukanafun so that the water consumers living around there can benefit.
Drinking water that will not give you water borne diseases such as typhoid, cholera, dysentery and others. Because most of our people are not drinking that type of water, we have also made provisions for purchase of utilities vehicles. You need to have vehicles within the system, and replace those buses. We also need to purchase the trucks that will be carrying our pipes of various lengths. We have made provision for vehicles so that we can send them to different area offices so that they can use them to assist in maintaining the facilities. So that is the major policy thrust of this of 2015 budget.
How are your charges?
We try to have a bill that is fair to all consumers and the company in such a way that we will be able to sustain the system, but that can only be advised if we metered the system. Right now, we don’t have the meters that are installed in the system so that we can have this billing. What we have now is just to charge the consumers only flat rates which are cheating on the side of the company. We charge flat rate of (N2100) per a flat per month which is too small.
If you divide N2100 by 30 days what you have is N70 only. I know that in many families in this state they spend more than N500 for water from commercial boreholes daily, but we only charge N70 per day and you use the water as you like. When the power supply is not steady what we do to supplement or supply the water to the public we have standby generators.
For instance if we are supplying all the water consumed by the Five Star hotel, and the pumping station along Nwaniba Road at Idu. The pumping stations are extended to all the towns we have in Eket, but it is not functional. We are trying to rehabilitate that but the ones in Oron are working very well. Oron people are getting water as far as I am concerned.
Relationship with commercial boreholes operators?
I don’t want to condemn the commercial bore holes operators out rightly, because they are also supplementing the efforts of the company and it is better for water to be available even when it is not potable. What we do advise is for all the bore holes operators to allow us access to get their water sampled, test and see if it is not fit for drinking, a very small amount of money of N1,600 per sample to analyze the water and if it is not good we go in and treat the water for them.
The treatment will last for 6 months and if they do the treatment for 2 times a year the water will be good for them to dispense. We equally do that for commercial companies like three stars hotels.
What we do there is called a bulk meter for them and we charge a rate of 100 or 105 per a km. We don’t charge the same thing as we are charging the residential areas.