Water pollution responsible for high water tariffs
– AVRL
Accra, July 28, Ghanadot/GNA – Mr.
Daniel Muomaalah, General Manager, Customer Care of Aqua
Vitens Rand Limited (AVRL), on Tuesday said high water
tariffs in the country was largely due to the high cost of
water treatment as a result of high level of pollution in
the country’s water bodies.
He said the citizens who complained about high water tariffs
were the very ones who polluted the water bodies and
therefore are to blame for the high water tariffs.
Mr. Muomaalah said this at the opening of a four-day
two-in-one workshop designed to fashion out a syllabus for
water as a subject area for basic schools and also to train
trainers who would implement the syllabus when it is ready.
The workshop, jointly organized by AVRL and Wise Water
Foundation with support from the ministries of Education and
Water Resources, Works and Housing, is being attended by
about 40 participants.
Mr. Muomaalah said the workshop was one of the many ways in
which AVRL sought to shift water from an engineering-based
to a community-focused issue as a way of bringing citizens
closer to the operations of AVRL to fully appreciate the
challenges of water treatment and distribution.
“Not until the majority of Ghanaians begin to appreciate
what these challenges are, it remains a mirage to provide
any lasting solution to the challenges facing the water
sector,” he said.
He said the ultimate focus of the workshop was children, in
order that they would become water ambassadors to their
communities and also grow up with a better sense of
appreciation for the value and importance of water and
water-based sanitation and environmental issues.
Mr. Andrew Barber, Managing Director of AVRL, said the
company spent an estimated GHC100 million Ghana cedis every
year for its operations, which largely involved the use of
chemicals and power for water treatment and distribution.
“In spite of the huge operational cost, demand still far
outstrips supply and we will need over GHC1.5 billion
capital investment to meet the country’s demand for potable
water,” he said.
Mr Barber said the high cost of water treatment was also the
problem of huge non-revenue water (about 48 per cent), due
to illegal connections, adding that education and awareness
creation is key to dealing with that kind of problem.
Mr. Barber said ahead of a comprehensive school syllabus on
water, AVRL had a programme dubbed “one day education on
water”, under which 4,200 children from 20 schools in Accra
had been educated on the importance and value of water.
“We are expanding that programme to benefit schools outside
Accra and we intend to educate at least 30,000 school kids
by the close of 2011 when our contract ends,” he said.
He said the rationale for the programme was to make children
water and sanitation ambassadors to challenge their parents
and neighbours to take responsibility for the water they use
and the way they treat water bodies.
Mr. Emmanuel Opare, Deputy Director, Basic Education, GES,
noted that whereas human population was rising, sources of
potable water kept dwindling, adding that the judicious
management of water and the environment should be a priority
to all.
He said it was in that light that the GES welcomed the idea
of creating a syllabus for water as a subject area in
schools, saying, water and environmental education were
matters of human survival rather than just a course of
study.
Mr. Opare urged participants to develop water and
environmental education programmes that would integrate
different dimensions of curriculum work in a way that would
make the knowledge and skills acquired responsive to
practical challenges.
Mr. Mintah Aboagye, Head of the Water Directorate of the
Ministry of Water Resources, Works and Housing noted that
water was the commonest conveyer of diseases and therefore
issues about pollution of water resources, domestic water
storage, illegal connections and wrong laying of underground
pipes should be taken seriously.
He said government was committed to making water supply
affordable to citizens but to the extent that citizens were
engaged in water-unfriendly activities, the cost of treating
and supplying potable water would remain high.
Ghanadot
