By Stanley Onyekwere
The FCT Water Board has declared about N400 million loses from illegal connections to Abuja water supply facility.
The Board’s General Manager, Engr. Tauheed Amusan, who disclosed this recently, lamented that while huge amount of money was being spent on maintaining all major sources of water supply, including the lower Usuma Dam and trunk lines, certain individuals and organisations have continued to break its pipes and engaging in illegal connections.
Amusan said: “One of the challenges we have, is a lot of illegal connections in our trunk loops. Abuja’s water system designed to deliver treated water through the tanks, but we have a situation where some people are connected to the trunks before it gets to the tanks.
“And this compromise what we have in the tank. We are gradually disconnecting these illegal connections. When we do that the tanks will be better and we will be able to deliver water to various destinations.
“There are also the challenges of leakages, vandalization and many more”.
Furthermore, he noted that the Lower Usuma Dam, which is the major sources of water supply in Abuja, has the capacity to generate 20,000 cubic litre of water per hour, but only about 15,000 to 16,000 cubic litres are being pushed out.
He added that regardless the efforts that government make to subsidize water supply, there are individuals and organizations that do not want to pay.
