Enugu Assembly wants vigilante committee to monitor transformers

Enugu State House of Assembly Committee on Rural Development, Community and Social Development programme (CSDP), has advised Enugu State Rural Electrification Board to form a rural vigilante management committee to monitor transformer.
The chairman of the committee, Chief Paul Nnajiofor, made the call in Enugu on Wednesday during the committee’s first oversight visit and familiarisation with the board after inauguration of seventh assembly.
Nnajiofor said that the essence of the initiative was to reduce the high rate of transformer vandalism in rural areas.
He said that the committee also wanted to ensure that the board keyed into the rural development agenda of the present administration led by Governor Ifeanyi Ugwuanyi.
Nnajiofor said that the assignment of the board was very important to government and to the entire state.
He added that in as much as they were getting their funding from the tax payers of the state, the constitution enabled the assembly to oversight their activities.
Nnajiofor said that in the next visit, the committee would go further to ensure that what they had on paper was what was physically on ground.
He called on the board to ensure that every project that was going on in any community must be captured properly and the stakeholders in the community must be aware of such projects.
“Time has gone when they will come to a community to install transformer bought by government money, energise it, give it to a substation and the people will not be aware.
“The stakeholders must be aware to appreciate the effort of the governor and promote the governor’s activities as Ugwuanyi led administration has done very well in many communities but some stakeholders were not aware,” he said.
Nnajiofor urged the board to submit the documentations of all their activities to the assembly for proper monitoring.
The committee chairman equally asked them to get the list of the major projects done since the inception of the administration until date.
He commended the board for going into the nooks and crannies to energies, put transformers and help to electrify the communities, urging them to explore more opportunity for partnership.
He called on masses to support the governor on his effort to transform the entire state and not to vandalise government’s property.
The General Manager of Enugu State Rural Electrification Board, Mr Onyema Odo, commended the Assembly for the synergy between them and the executive arm of government.
Odo said that rural electrification had a lot to do in rural development, adding that if they did not develop rural areas, urban areas could not contain everybody.
He said that his administration had electrified more than 300 communities, in terms of rural electricity, boosting the existing ones, extension and construction of new ones where they don’t have electricity at all.
He said that the level of electricity at the rural areas had reduced the rush by people of Enugu State to the urban cities and also contributed to the villagers knowing that they were part of government.
He thanked the state governor and his teams for working out modalities to ensure that those rural communities enjoyed amenities like urban cities.
He, therefore, encouraged the communities to work with the community leaders, the town union leaders, the vigilante and the police in their various community to guard the projects.