Benin City — THE Edo state government yesterday threatened to take appropriate legal action against government officials who allocated lands belonging to the State Ministry of Water Resources and Sanitation across its facilities in the state capital and beyond.
The Commissioner in charge of the ministry, Hon Washington Osifo gave this declaration when in company of the Edo State Public Property Protection Committee led by Eugene Okoloise visited the Ministry's facilities where some of the encroachers who have been building permanent structures claimed they were given the allocations by officials of the Water Corporation which is an agency under the ministry.
Osifo said "we will not close our eyes to the fact that these are government properties, we need to reclaim them for the government such that government will have use for them either government and can decide to do whatever they want to do with it but certainly it should not go to the hands of individuals.
"We will set up an inquiry, some names have been mentioned, mentioned by those who we met on ground, how they came to it, inquiry will produce appropriate reports to the ministry and we will take appropriate steps against those involved.
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"No individual irrespective of their position in the ministry or agency can enter into contractual obligation on behalf of the government without seeking and obtaining the consent of the government to enter into the contract and when you go into it, it becomes illegal.
"So what we are saying is that if whether staff of the ministry or staff of the agency which is under the control of the ministry, no one has the legal right to enter into contractual applications with anybody to the extent of giving them shanties and some of them have now progressed to building superstructures with concrete blocks on what is supposed to be a temporary apartment."
On the government's plan to provide public water to the people, the Commissioner said the development in the urban areas, the government of Monday Okpebholo was looking at going into the rural areas to provide public water before the urban areas which public water infrastructure has been distorted by urbanization activities and the sinking of boreholes by individuals.
"We are reviewing the situation, we want to see whether today given the volume of investment in road, electricity, drainage control that have been done, private and public houses built , whether it is possible to still subject those facilities to supply of public water.
"Our target is that we are concentrating on rural communities that are critical that are in need of water. We want to start from there before we progress to the urban areas."
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