The Director of Public Relations of the Ghana Water Company Limited, Stanley Martey, has confirmed that there is water rationing currently going on in Accra.
“We are doing demand management but it is difficult to communicate it at the mass level hence we are engaging at the district level to make our customers aware of the situation.”
He told 3FM’s Sunrise morning show host Alfred Ocansey that the water rationing has become necessary due to the urgent need for demand management.
He cited the dry season, the pollution of water sources due to galamsey and the increase in treatment time as some of the contributing factors.
Purity of water
There are general concerns about the purity and safety of the water supplied by Ghana Water Company as consumers observe coloured water flowing through their taps and sometimes having debris settle at the bottom of stored water.
Mr. Martey, however, retorted that the water supplied by nation’s water distribution firm is one of the best in the world and that he drinks directly from the tap in his house.
“We treat our water to meet two standards; the World Health Organisation(WHO) standard and that of the Ghana Standards Authority (GSA) which is even higher. Yet we even try to exceed the GSA standard because we want to be the best globally. There is no way we will serve dirty water to Ghanaians.”
He believes that burst pipes and the way water is stored are some of the factors that may affect the purity of water, but it even takes GWCL some few seconds to flush out dirty water from its pipes, he indicated.
Customers with such coloured water are entreated to fetch some into a bottle and present it to Ghana Water Company for proper analysis to be done to ascertain the cause.
Tariffs
The Communications Director of GWCL disclosed that the current tariffs will be reviewed.
“We are also in a tariff review year, so we are expecting that current tariffs will be reviewed,” he said. “As to whether they will go upward or downwards, I wouldn’t be able to tell. We have submitted all our proposals. The PURC has received all our reports and we expect them to analyse well and give us the right tariffs.”
Currently, the Company charges a tariff rate of GH¢8 per cubic meter.
Mr. Martey further revealed that their operational cost has gone up due to the rising cost of chemicals against the exchange rate, and even for the past 22 years their charges have not been cost reflective, hence the company has been incurring losses.
The recent financial report of the company indicates that it has made a loss of GH¢1.7 billion as a results of forex differentials since the chemicals for treatment have to be imported.
