Former minister of State for education and governorship candidate of the Social Democratic Party (SDP) in Delta State, Olorogun Barr. Kenneth Gbagi, has concluded plans for his administration to make potable water supply available in all the local government areas of the state when he assumes office as governor.
Olorogun Gbagi, has put in place a workable solution anime at ensuring that the local governments together with communities are saddled with the responsibility for rural water supply, while ensuring that urban water supply is maintained.
This is part of his plans to reduce cholera outbreak and other water-borne diseases across the state as frantic efforts to provide domestic water for both the rural and urban areas would be vigorously pursued.
Gbagi is not unaware that some parts of the state have access to clean and unpolluted water for domestic use, particularly boreholes privately dug by corporate individuals, while some other parts especially the rural poor may have to trek long distances and pay so much to get even less than the needed daily amount of water to use.
It should be noted that clean and unpolluted water is a basic requirement for sustainable development.
This prompted the government of countries at the United Nation summit in the year 2000 to list provision of clean water as one of the major targets of the millennium development goals (MDGs) now Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).
However, with this level of importance, accorded water it is sad to remark that in the rural areas of the state where about 50% of the total population resides, 60% to 65% of the population do not have access to clean and unpolluted water.
Therefore, Gbagi has capture the factors responsible for poor access to portable water in the rural areas of the state, as he has mapped out some factors which include and not restricted to design, performance and maintenance, societal problems, institutional failures, financial impediments among others, have been identified.
While factors that account for the low access to domestic water supply which include poor water supply facilities, poor technical capacity of the host communities and a lack of adequate regulatory frame work that captures portable water supply would be tackled head on.
