Work commences to turn around Mada water works

Engr. Simon Ibi, Acting General Manager of Nasarawa State Water Board told Daily Trust the contractors have placed orders for the manufacture of equipment for the repair job, and are expecting shipment.
The current administration of Umaru Tanko Al-Makura decided to award the repair work, about 20 years after the construction of the water work. The Nasarawa State Water Board entered into a N600 million contract with three companies to carry out major repair works on the ailing water works.
Governor Al-Makura approved the contract award as part of the administration’s overall project to eliminate cases of water shortage in urban and rural areas.
The three contractors are: Pianampianti Nigeria Limited, Jos Hansen and Sophne Nigeria, and Power Save Engineering Limited.
Engr. Ibi said the project entails replacement of obsolete equipment with new ones, and carrying out general repairs that will restore the efficiency of the water works to perform at full capacity of 10 million gallons of water a day to Keffi, Akwanga, Gudi, Garaku, Sabon Gida and environs.
The water works was constructed to generate 10 million gallons of water per day, to Keffi, Akwanga, Garaku, Sabon Gida and environs, spanning two zones of Nasarawa-West and Nasarawa-North on four major roads of Lafia-Akwanga, Akwanga-Jos, Akwanga-Wamba, Akwanga-Keffi.
Today, the water works can hardly generate more than half of this capacity. Meanwhile, the population of these urban centres and their environs has continually soared, with growing need for domestic water use.
There are no available official statistics to show the population growth indices in the last 20 years in these towns, but Daily Trust can report that in  Keffi, for instance, the establishment of the Federal Medical Centre (FMC), the Nasarawa State University, Keffi (NSUK) and Nasarawa State School of Health (NSCH), as well as other institutions that have sprung up with the creation of Nasarawa from the old Plateau State, have increased water need because of the rise in population of people trooping there.
The dramatic cut in the production and supply capacity from the water works has been felt in Keffi, more than elsewhere because of the rise of the population there. Only on February 25, 2013, thousands of students, some of them new entrants then, poured into the roads that morning, and protested against a cut in water supply.