…As LSWRC Meets Critical Stakeholders, To Host Water Conference
In furtherance of the quest to engender consumption of only safe water by residents, Lagos State Governor, Mr Babajide Sanwo-Olu has approved the Drinking and Packaged Water Quality Guidelines to regulate the activities of producers of water in the state.
Executive Secretary of Lagos State Water Regulatory Commission (LSWRC), Mrs Funke Femi Adepoju, who disclosed this during separate stakeholders’ meetings with the Nigeria Employers Consultative Association (NECA) and the Association of Table Water Producers (ATWAP), said the guidelines would go a long way to assist players in the water abstraction industry to operate in line with global best practices.
According to Adepoju, the guidelines would be released by February this year.
“It is gratifying to report that the Governor, Mr Babajide Olusola Sanwo-Olu has approved that we should print the Drinking Water Quality Guidelines and the Packaged Water Quality Guidelines which will get to the operators latest by February.
“The guidelines will assist operators to follow standard best practices. We know, with information and enlightenment, we are very sure that people will benefit from what we are doing because we have a job to regulate and to also advise and educate through sensitization and through advocacy programmes.
“The issue of the guidelines is key and very important. Information is power and when you have information documented, it is more power because it becomes a referral and you can always go back to it and use it to guide your people. It is available and affordable and it will also serve as a guide for those who are to establish water factories. The goal is to ensure that we have safe water for drinking,” Adepoju said.
She urged the operators not to see the water surcharge as a tax but a token to enable government invest back in water resource management that will continue to guarantee availability of water, ensure people are not consuming contaminated water and secure the environment.
Adepoju said in as much as water is a common resource but it is also scarce, and that the people taking water as a business needed to understand that they are taking something that belongs to everybody and providing it for the people again in terms of usage through an economic activity.
“If water abstraction is not regulated and proper investment made for water resource management, its portends great danger including but not limited to porosity, contamination, pollution, dryness and even collapsed building, among others.
“All we are saying is that please pay your token to assist government plan for water resource management. The truth of the matter is that government does not need the revenue accruable from water charges to build hospitals and roads. There are so many studies that can guarantee that you keep getting water; that can guarantee that the water you are pumping is not contaminated.
“I want to assuage our minds and allay our fears that the government is not interested in taxing. There is a study that we are proposing and the cheapest bill to analyze a lot of water situations in the state is well over N200 Million. It’s not as if we want to take it from one person or body but at least it is easier for government to distribute all these expenses, and so the revenue accruable is in our best interest collectively as a people.
“I am appealing that we should not see it as taxation and that is why it is also important for us to give you good rates. Government is interested in your ability to pay and that is why the rates are so low,” Adepoju explained.
She said the meeting with the stakeholders became imperative in view of the need to adequately carry them along in the activities of the Commission, saying that a Safe Water Conference involving all players in the water industry would soon be convened, while the Commission was also firming up plans to build its lab, all in a bid to ensure that residents only consume safe water.
