by Justice Lee Adoboe
ACCRA, March 9 (Xinhua) -- Although Ghana attained 80 percent national water coverage two years ahead of the Millennium Development Goals target date of December 2015, the country's water supply system is under stress, officials stated here on Thursday.
Speaking during the media launch ahead of the World Water Day later this month, Margaret Macauley, Chief Manager of Water Quality Assurance at the state-run Ghana Water Company Limited (GWCL), noted that most of the company's water treatment plants were under threat due to water pollution and environmental degradation that has affected the quality of raw water in the basins.
According to her, most of the country's water treatment plants were under serious threat as a result of pressures from economic activities, including farming along the banks, logging and uncontrolled illegal mining.
"These pressures affect the company's ability to discharge its core mandate, namely, deterioration in water quality and quantity of water sources; high water treatment chemical consumption and cost; very high operational losses of about 50 percent, especially on the mining affected sources and frequent unscheduled shutdowns," she added.
These pressures have also resulted in frequent and high maintenance cost, lack of consumer confidence in the water supplied to customers, reduction in lifespan of water treatment plants, low revenue generation and cost recovery and threat to public health nationally.
During his Independence anniversary speech, President Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo bemoaned the high level of water pollution in the country.
"On a day like this, we cannot ignore the state of our environment. We are endangering the very survival of the beautiful and blessed land that our forebears bequeathed to us. The dense forests that were home to varied trees, plants and fauna, have largely disappeared."
"Today, we import timber for our use, and the description of our land as a tropical forest no longer fits the reality. Our rivers and lakes are disappearing, and those that still exist are all polluted," the president observed.
Ben Ampomah, Executive Secretary of the Water Resources Commission, the regulatory body of all water resources in Ghana, told Xinhua in an interview that the situation needed a collective action since it affected all Ghanaians.
He said for the president to address such an issue on the country's independence anniversary day was ample demonstration of how serious the issue had become.
"Now, in terms of how to tackle it, it is an issue where we need to make it everybody's business; from schoolchildren to institutions that are mandated to regulate the use; institutions that use the resource, and institutions that have activities that are related to water and minerals," Ampomah urged.
All other activities, including agriculture and resources that also have an effect on the water, land, and landowners who sell those lands for economic and social activities that tend to have an impact on water resources should all get involved in dealing with the issue, he said.
