The Rural Water Supply and Sanitation Agency (RUWASSA) has pledged to collaborate with an NGO, the Society for Water and Sanitation, on improved water sanitation and hygiene in the FCT.
The Executive Director, RUWASSA, FCT, Dr Mohammed Dan-Hassan, made the pledge during an advocacy visit paid to him by the NGO in Abuja.
He said that his office was open to more cooperation and collaboration with other NGOs.
“We are open to cooperation and collaboration; we have been granted official approval by the Minister of State, FCT, to engage all NGOs and development partners willing to collaborate with us.
“The Society for Water and Sanitation has so far come up with good development; they have carried out their baseline assessment on the current conditions,” he said.
Dan-Hassan said that what remained now was to call all the stakeholders, look at the figures and see how to use the data to improve the water and sanitation situations in various communities.
“With the data, we now have a base upon which to project our plans on, especially now that we are looking to completely eradicate open defecation in the FCT. The data will serve as the basis to know how far we have gone.
“The assessments will be conducted periodically, say within a year or two. That way, we can easily identify what
challenges still need more attention, especially with the eradication open defecation in the FCT,” Dan-Hassan said.
Mr Desmond Chieshe, Publicity Secretary of the NGO, lauded the efforts of RUWASSA, while also promising to work hand-in-hand with the organisation to tackle the challenges of Water, Sanitation and Hygiene (WASH).
“Collecting data came with very high expectations, but we had issues because getting data at the grassroots was difficult.
“We went to all the area councils to collect data and most of them didn’t have real desk officers to give us accurate data,” he said. (NAN)
