Report: FAME 2012 and the World Water Forum 2012

           By Babatope Babalobi who was in Marseilles

 

France’s second largest city- Marseilles, coordinates 43° 17′ 47.04″ N, 5° 22′ 12,   last month hosted two week long global meetings to discuss the challenges in the water and sanitation sector; specifically to identify management options that breeds inequity and crisis in water resource allocation and sanitation service delivery, and proffer solutions to prevent water related issues from causing a prophetic third world war.

Officially, what was supposed to be held in Marseille between March 11^th and 17^th    2012, was the World Water Forum (WWF), the sixth. Previous WWFs were held in Morocco 1997, Netherlands 2000, Japan 2003, Mexico 2006, and Turkey 2009.

The WWF is organised every three years by the World Water Council (WWC) which describes itself as a an international multi-stakeholder platform, established in 1996 “to promote awareness, build political commitment and trigger action on critical water issues at all levels, including the highest decision-making level, to facilitate the efficient conservation, protection, development, planning, management and use of water in all its dimensions on an environmentally sustainable basis for the benefit of all life on earth”.

Read more: http://assemblyonline.info/?p=16025

Residents default over payment of water bill

 By: Olufunmilayo Falobi  Email: funmimm@yahoo.com

 

One of the challenges facing Water Corporation services in Lagos State is the evading of payment by residents. Some of the residents who are under the water corporation scheme owe the company and this is affecting it in delivering effective service. The corporation charges residents N500 per flat and it has been discovered that some of them (residents) would not pay the money as at when due and would allow it to accumulate for period of time thereby becoming problems for them to pay.

Investigation also showed that in a situation where residents do not pay accumulated bills, the corporation would cut them off from the main source supply but some of the residents have also devised a means of reconnecting themselves back by contacting a plumber to help them connect their pipe back to the main source.

This is a big challenge for the water corporation. Some residents explained that in the house where they live, the landlord usually collect water bill along with rent and so they are not aware that the landlord was not remitting same to the water corporation until a bill from the corporation revealed that they owe.

Mrs Mercy Okafor said, “we were surprised one day when the water corporation officials came to our house and gave us a bill of N170,000 which we owed for the period of two to three years. We explained that we usually pay everything to the landlord but currently, everybody pays flat by flat. When the landlord who does not live in the house was contacted he said, “I will settle it.”

Payment default by residents is a big setback to the corporation and it was learnt that at the end of the day, in most cases, agreement would be reached by the corporation and the defaulters and the remaining balance not paid becomes bad debt.