Residents and communities in Kogi State have been called upon to take ownership of public utilities as a way of partnering with the State Government for better service delivery.
Yahaya Farouk, Commissioner for Water Resources, gave the charge over the weekend when he visited the Operators of the GSM Village at Cantonment in Lokoja to thank them for their patriotism in accepting to fix a broken pipe that affected the free flow of water to Kabawa and Kporaka Areas.
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“Since last week when we tried to send water to Kabawa, we discovered that it was difficult getting to the desired community and location.
”We discovered that at the junction linking the highway by the GSM village in Cantonment, in the course of the GSM operators trying to mount their signboard, they broke one of our pipes, deep down to the ground.
”The damage was so much that it affected pressure that would have allowed for water to get to Kabawa and Kporaka”.
“The operators of the GSM village were patriotic and accepted that they were going to fix it at their own cost. They didn’t just stop at replacing the pipe, they changed the whole length of the pipe and covered it with concrete.”
Farouk however commended the GSM operators and thanked them for the display of patriotism, pointing out that if the Ccommunities, Associations will be patriotic as the GSM operators, things would be better in the State and Country as a whole.
He said, “This is the type of partnership we want with communities and for the people to take ownership of public utilities and Government assets.
”If all of us do this type of ownership and partnership things will be better in the country. If you have a pipe connecting your house and it brakes, you don’t say it is for government because if you say until Government comes to fix it, we will continue to have waste of money and resources.
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”We will make sure the handshake between the Government, the people, contractors, Communities, the Traditional Council and the Youths is properly built so that whatever security we are going to provide meets the desired objective and that it is secured. Without this handshake, we as a government will continue to encounter problems”.
