21st April, 2019
The Niger State Water Board says inadequate electricity supply is responsible for the shortage of portable water supply in Minna and its environs for over three weeks.
Alhaji Hassan Chado, the General Manager of the board, disclosed this during an interview with the News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) in Minna on Sunday.
“The kind of electricity supply we are getting from the Abuja Electricity Distribution Company (AEDC) now can hardly power our water pumping machines.
“This is why we are having the shortage of water and when we use our 2,000 KVA generator, is only a few people that will get the water,” he said.
Chado said that it took N1 million to run the generator for 24 hours in order to power the water pumps.
“Aside that, some parts of the state capital will not get the water when we use generator, we cannot even sustain it because of the high cost,” he said.
He explained that the task of supplying portable water was capital intensive, adding that there were problems of inadequate funding of the sector by previous governments in the state.
This, he said, had forced the present administration to go extra mile to develop the sector.