The Amalgamated Union
of Public Corporations Civil Service Technical and Recreational Services
Employees (AUPCTRE) has called on government at all levels to remove impediments to accessing portable
water to ensure the campaign to check the spread of the COVID-19 pandemic is won.
In a statement in
Abuja, AUPCTRE said that the World Health Organisation’s (WHO) recommendation
on hand-washing with soap continually echoed by government brings to fore the
centrality of water in combating the virus, and equally exposed the lip-service
Nigerian government has paid to this crucial need of the citizenry.
The group points to
some of the noticeable threats to universal access to water in Nigeria which include
poor budgetary allocation to the sector, and the growing recourse to various
forms of privatizations.
AUPCTRE National
President, Comrade Benjamin Anthony said: “While the public awareness
communication, including the hand washing messages from government at all
levels are laudable, the absence of concrete policies and actions to address
the root cause of unavailability of water in our communities makes mockery of
the campaign to check the COVID-19 pandemic”
Comrade Anthony
expressed concern that more than two years after the federal government
declared a state of emergency in the water sector, nothing meaningful has
happened at national and state levels except recommendations on how to abdicate
responsibility to for-profit only entities, including corporations that have
failed in their countries of origin.
The AUPCTRE national
president pointed out that the Nigerian water sector is plagued by poor
budgetary allocation, lack of political will on the part of government and the
recourse to all forms of privatization, including the much-discredited Public
Private Partnership (PPP) promoted by the World Bank, which prioritizes profits
over basic rights.
He recommended that to
solve the water crisis in Nigeria federal and state governments must build the
political will to prioritize water for the people, leading to a comprehensive
plan that invests public funds in water infrastructure necessary to provide
universal water access, which will create jobs, improve public health, and
invigorate the national economy.