Work to replace damaged water pipes in Jos and Bukuru communities will begin in April this year, Plateau State Commissioner of Water Resources and Rural Development, Idi Ibrahim Waziri, said yesterday.

Our correspondent reports that many parts of the state capital currently do not have pipe-born water. Waziri, who spoke to Daily Trust, said new water pipes which had been ordered to replace the existing aged and leaking pipes would arrive in April, immediately after which ground excavation to lay them would start.

"The existing pipes have been there for decades and when Governor Jonah Jang came in 2007, he said he could not accept the situation. He immediately decided that new pipes be bought to replace the old pipes and to extend water to newly developed areas where there is no tap water now," he said.

The commissioner had earlier in the day inaugurated an inter-ministerial committee which the state government raised to address issues of compensation to land and farm owners whose property are affected by the government's water supply rehabilitation expansion projects.