Prof. Joseph Utsev, Minister of Water Resources and San­itation, has declared that only 14 percent of water facilities are constructed according to the standard technical design and configuration in Nigeria.

Utsev stated this on Tues­day at the National Stakehold­ers’ Workshop for the Develop­ment of Water, Sanitation and Hygiene(WASH) Sector-wide Sustainability Checks Action Plan and Sustainability Com­pact held in Abuja.

Quoting the 2021 WASH National Outcome Routine Mapping (WASHNORM), he said 23% of all publicly owned water facilities are currently non-functional.

Utsev represented by the Minister of State, Federal Ministry of Water Resourc­es and Sanitation, Barrister Bello Muhammad Goronyo, pointed out that even more worrisome is the dependable values for these water facili­ties in terms of design and configuration, operation and maintenance.

According to him, “The 2021 WASHNORM estimated the dependability of water fa­cilities in terms of design and configuration at 14% while dependability with respect to operation and maintenance was 1%.

“This means that only 14% of water facilities are constructed according to the standard technical design and configuration that ensures sustainability and only 11% have dependable operation and maintenance systems in place.

“While the WASHNORM has provided data on the func­tionality of WASH systems, there is a compelling need to systematically monitor and track the factors that contrib­ute to the sustainability of these systems as there was no tool in the country for this purpose.”

The Minister noted that the Sector-wide Sustainabili­ty Check (5w5C) was the first attempt by Nigerian govern­ment, with the support of UNICEF and other partners in the WASH sector to assess and quantify the sustainabil­ity factors of WASH services at different levels of house­holds/communities and in­stitutions.