Date Published: 07/17/09

Oni solicits UNICEF support on water and sanitation in Ekiti

Gov. Segun Oni

Ekiti State Governor, Engr. Segun Oni has urged the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) to collaborate with the State government in providing water and sanitation facilities in all Primary and Secondary Schools in the State.

According to a media aide to the governor, Mr. Lere Olayinka, Governor Oni, who made the appeal during the signing of the 2009/2012 Programme Implementation Agreement (PIA) with UNICEF in Ado Ekiti advised the global body to concentrate its efforts on one particular area of need rather than working on too many areas and not achieving  the desired  results.

His words: “Government is faced with too many competing demands. These include challenges of Education, Health Care Delivery, Roads and Infrastructure, Power and Water supply among others. But we cannot solve these problems at once. That is why my administration is concentrating its efforts on roads, water supply and power.

“Our hope is that at the end of our tenure, problems of these three key areas would have been completely solved. In fact, our hope is that provision of water, good road, and stable electricity would never be issues of campaign again in the State.”

While noting that his administration had constructed over six water treatment plants, 300 kilometres of water pipelines, and 12 booster stations, in order to make potable water available to all parts of the state, Governor Oni said the task of making potable water available to all schools in the State would be easy to accomplish for UNICEF as water pipelines are close to most schools in the State.

According to him, UNICEF only needed to construct overhead tanks in the schools, which would be connected to the new pipelines, while boreholes would be sunk in schools that are too far from existing water pipelines.

Oni directed the State Ministry of Education to provide UNICEF with the required data for the programme.

The governor disclosed that his administration had set up a steering committee that would prepare grounds for the establishment of family courts in the State, while efforts were also on to come up with a legislation that would provide succour and protect the interests of orphaned and vulnerable children in the state.

Earlier, the Assistant Representative of UNICEF B-Field Office, Mr. Karim Akadiri who led the UNICEF team said the agency was now adopting a state-wide mode for its programmes rather than concentrating its efforts on selected local government areas as it was being done in the past.

Akadire, who stated that the programme, which is expected to have a 10-year development period and is expected to commence immediately commended the state government for judicious implementation of the Millennium Development Goals (MDG) water project.