Maiduguri – Alhaji Abubakar Deribe, Caretaker Committee Chairman, Jere Local Government Area, Borno, on Sunday said the council had sunk 42 boreholes with hand pumps in the area.
In addition, he said that the council constructed 20 earth dams to support the boreholes in providing water to people in the area.
Deribe told the News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) in Maiduguri that the projects were undertaken to address the problems of potable water supply in the 12 wards under his council.
He said that the projects were also conceived to minimise the heavy dependence on diesel and petrol-powered boreholes and save cost.
“Water supply has been a major problem in Jere for quite some time; so, to address the problem, we decided to do the hand pumps which are cheaper and easier to maintain.
“The conversion of submersible pumps into hand-driven pumps became necessary due to the high cost of diesel and petrol; most communities can no longer afford such commodity to power these boreholes.
“I have been to some communities and they told me they preferred the manually-operated hand pumps to solar-powered ones because the former can be used any time of the day.
“The council had also flagged off fumigation exercise to control mosquitoes in five wards in the area,” he said.
The chairman, who did not give the cost of the projects, said that the fumigation was carried out by the council in collaboration with the Borno State Environmental Protection Agency. (NAN)