The Borno Government and the World Bank has trained 270 stakeholders drawn from the 27 Local Government Areas on Water, Sanitation and Hygiene (WASH).
The training was conducted under the Multi-Sectoral Crisis Recovery Project (MCRP) aimed at strengthening the over 1000 community WASH committees in rural areas of the state.
Speaking at the end of the five-day training programme in Maiduguri on Saturday, the Borno Coordinator of MCRP, Baba-Zanna Abdulkareem, raised concern over the prevalence of diseases associated with WASH in rural and populated slums of urban areas.
Abdulkareem, who was represented by the Monitoring and Evaluation Officer of the project, Mr Bako Shuaibu, said statistics had shown that 70 per cent of water facilities failed in their first year of operation due to the lack of proper concept of community ownership and sustainability plan.
He said the training would strengthen the capacity of all the stakeholders in water and hygiene sectors with the principles of good water and waste management.
In his remarks, the Training Consultant, Mr Suleiman Dauda, said the training aligned the overall development objectives of Borno Government to ensure that its investments in the sector yielded results.
Dauda commended the Gov. Babagana Zulum administration for being proactive in service delivery by investing in people-oriented projects and working towards sustainability of the projects.
One of the facilitators of the workshop, Mr Abubakar Musa, urged the trainees to make maximum use of the knowledge acquired in promoting sustainability of sanitation, personal and environmental hygiene for public safety.
Ms Yagana Grema from Bama LGA, Hussaini Muhammad from Damboa LGA, and Mr Halfa Wafenyi, from Jere LGA, who spoke on behalf of participants, expressed satisfaction with the integrated knowledge they acquired on WASH.
They pledged to stepdown the knowledge at their various WASH community committees for maximum results.
