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Sanitation Ministry to assess water bodies

The Minister of Sanitation and Water Resources, Ms Cecilia Ama Dapaah, says the ministry intends to embark on an outreach programme to assess the nature of water bodies in mining communities.

She explained that such an exercise would provide the ministry with an in-depth knowledge about the state of the country’s water bodies due to the activities of illegal mining, as they served as a source for the Ghana Water Company Limited (GWCL).

Ms Dapaah was speaking at the opening of this year’s sector performance review meeting in Accra on Thursday where all the agencies under the ministry spoke about their performance in relation to the targets set in the 2018-2022 Medium Term Development Plan.

The meeting also afforded the ministry the opportunity to develop the requisite strategies and modalities towards the attainment of its 2022-2025 Medium Term Development Plan targets.

Some of the agencies that participated in the meeting included Ghana Water Company Limited Community Water and Sanitation Agency and the Coalition of Non-Governmental Organisations in Water and Sanitation.

“Very soon we will be going for an outreach to go and look at the water bodies that we have. The fact that we have so much water doesn’t mean we should destroy all the water. I therefore appeal to all those engaged in ‘galamsey’ to desist from it,” Ms Dapaah said.

According to her, although the MSWR had faced some setbacks, it had also made great strides in the management and treatment of water from various sources for safe consumption and the improvement of sanitation through various intervention programmes.

Ms Dapaah further underscored the need for a stronger private-public sector partnership in the effective water management and treatment as well as improved sanitation.

In his presentation, the Managing Director (MD) of the GWCL, Dr Clifford Braimah, noted that his outfit was targeting an increase in urban water coverage from 78.2 per cent to 89.10 per cent by 2025.

For this reason, Dr Braimah added that they had set a target of reducing non-revenue water from 45.7 per cent to 25 per cent by December 2025.

Additionally, he said GWCL had procured new metres to replace the old ones in the system to increase the proportion of metered customers from 89.9 per cent to 95 per cent, while improving billing and collection ratio from 86.2 per cent to 95 per cent by December 2025.

The GWCL, Dr Braimah noted was currently replacing old pipelines in the system.

While acknowledging that the GWCL had faced some setbacks, Dr Braimah said it was committed to its mandate of offering better service delivery to its customers as well as meeting its 2022-2025 Medium Term targets.

BY BENJAMIN ARCTON-TETTEY

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