Adentan residents finally get water
Residents of Adentan and its environs in the Greater Accra Region can now breath a sigh of relief because water flows continuously through their taps.
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This is the first time in over five years that water has flowed through their taps.
However, as the residents jubilate over the flow of water, the Ghana Water Company Limited (GWCL) now faces the challenges of managing wastage of water in the community, illegal connections and unbilled consumers.
Unbilled customers are those who consume water but have not been billed.
While conceding to the challenges, the District Manager of the GWCL, Mr Paul Cletus Akpanya, gave an assurance that the company was taking steps to address those challenges.
Steps taken
He said as part of efforts to address those challenges, the company had now established a district office in the Adentan municipality which started operations on March 17, 2015 to deal with the issues.
The manager said the company had since embarked on sensitisation programmes by using the public address system in the community to explain why consumers needed to honour their civic obligation by paying their water bills.
In addition, Mr Akpanya said, from April 19 to 30, 2015, his office was able to mend and replace 44 burst pipelines, discovered and billed 257 unbilled consumers and regularised 30 illegal connections.
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Illegal connections
On illegal connection, he explained that anyone found engaging in it was made to pay GHc780, made up of a penalty of GHc500 and the rest for the meter installation, customer deposit
and registration.
He identified the use of substandard pipelines as another challenge the company was confronted with, especially in the newly developing areas, and explained that “when we detect such pipelines, we insist on them being replaced with the right ones”.
He acknowledged that the substandard pipelines were mostly used by those who did illegal connections.
The district manager said currently there were 6,000 customers of the company in the Adentan municipality, with about 1,880 of them unbilled, adding that he was confident that his field officers would ensure that all consumers were properly documented and billed.
Community assistance programme
Mr Akpanya said his office had introduced a community assistance programme for pipeline extension through which the leadership of communities without pipelines were encouraged to contribute towards piping water to their communities by actually contributing a little more.
He said one of the communities submitted 316 consumers based on the programme and each was billed GHc670, explaining, “It may look expensive but this guarantees them quality and continuous supply of potable water.”
He was happy that so far about five communities had signed onto the programme “and we will start the laying of the pipelines for the first of such communities by the end of this month”.
Pay your bills
He appealed to those getting water to pay their bills promptly to avoid disconnection, stressing that the company did not want to engage in confrontation.
Mr Akpanya also appealed to residents to promptly report any leakage to his office, since the system was not automated.
The Adentan Municipal Chief Executive, Mr Benjamin Angenu, had earlier called on residents, especially those within the SSNIT Flats, to be “more responsible”.
He recalled that since water started running through the taps, the challenge had been to get residents to accept the responsibility of replacing their individual broken pipelines.
Writer’s Email: severious.dery@graphic.com.gh
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