From Olanrewaju Lawal, Birnin Kebbi
The Chairman of the Supervising Committee of Hydro Power Producing Areas Development Commission (HYPPADEC) Professor Sale Kalau has commended the host Communities of some of the agency’s projects sited in Kebbi state for their commitment towards maintenance and protection in their domain.
Kalau,stated this after a stakeholders meeting in Yauri town,with residents and other important personalities in the area on maintenance of the facilities in their area.
The Chairman of the Committee, his team and entourage of the Managing Director of HYPPADEC, Alhaji Abubakar Sadiq -Yelwa were in the state to inspect some of the projects executing in different communities of the state.
While briefing newsmen,Kalau said: “we started this tour of inspecting these projects from Birnin Kebbi, to Jega,to Illo,Argungu and now we are in Yauri. We don’t just stopped at the City centers,we entered the nooks and crannies of the villag
” I can tell you that,it is true that HYPPADEC is providing projects of various kind to the people. There are projects In the area of health,agriculture, road network, power and street lights. We are not only inspecting these projects, we are ensuring they are up to the standard.
“HYPPADEC as the Federal government agency, must do projects that are more standard than that of Local Government and state government. So,these are some of the things we went out to inspect.
” We also want to ascertain that the final users,the people are going to utilize it. So,glory be God,these people wherever we go,they are shower encomium on HYPPADEC and promised to protect the projects and maintain it.
“They really shown commitment to this and we also educate them to set up committee on this so that they will not be waiting for the government to be maintaining the projects for them.We really commend them for this commitment”, he said.
In his remark,the Managing Director of HYPPADEC, Alhaji Abubakar Sadiq-Yelwa, disclosed that,the agency will publicly announce the biding of tender for the 20 years old Yauri water works for any company to bid for it rehabilitation on January 19th,2023.
He said that the projects is about N1.7 billion which is designed to expand the project from initial one million litres of water with addition one million capacity.
According to him,” the community has given their commitment to start paying for water given to them. We decided to have this meeting as a prerequisite for the signing of the contract because,we don’t want to spends huge amount of money,N1.7billion to provide this service and yet,this services bill be left to waste because there is no maintenance.
“So if the community is paying for the water they are consuming, the money generated will be use to maintain the facilities by the water board and the people will continued to enjoying the provision of the water in their households”, he said.