The Executive Secretary of the Public Utilities Regulatory Commission, Dr. Ishmeal Ackah, says the Commission in collaboration with the Ghana Water Company Limited intends to work with stakeholders to address the water crisis in the Central Region.
He said PURC and Ghana Water Company are working out strategies that will help preserve water bodies to ensure that consumers get access to quality water.
Dr. Ishmael AcKah was speaking to the media shortly after an engagement with the Central Regional branch of the Ghana Water Company as part of measures to help identify ways to improve water supply in the region.
“A number of water bodies are polluted because of galamsey [Illegal mining], so they need to do more to deal with that. What we have advised as PURC is to let some of these challenges known to the communities and to work with everybody including the media and opinion leaders to come out with localised strategies. We know that at the national level, we have a task force and other teams, but what can we do at the local level to preserve our water bodies to get quality water.”
“In some areas, people don’t get water at all because of this challenge, so the Ghana Water Company has already started investing in some poly tanks in Biriwa and other areas. We are also encouraging them to work with our team to ensure that other areas that are not getting water have access to poly tanks to also get some reliable supply of water. So these are some of the suggestions we’ve provided. We are going to work with them to ensure that people benefit from quality water.”
The Central Regional branch of the Ghana Water Company attributed the recent water shortage in the region to the activities of illegal miners.
According to the Central Regional Manager of the company, Kwasi Abebrese, as a result of the infiltration of galamsey activities, the quality of the raw water source turns bad, and as such volumes reduce, thereby limiting the amount of water for extraction.
“In a very bad situation, we may not get the sufficient quantity of water to extract before we start the production process. So for some of our production centers, there’s no water to produce. Then for the areas where we can produce the water, the extraction becomes difficult. For some, we even have to do desilting at the edges to create more room for the volumes to build up”.
For close to three months, many communities in the Central Region including Cape Coast, Moree, and Biriwa among others have been experiencing limited or no water supply.
The Central Regional Manager of GWCL called on the government to ensure that the illegal mining activities are halted, or else the country may have to import water in the future.