Govt secures World Bank funding- To restore water supply to Agona Nkum

Government has secured funding from the World Bank to restore water supply to Agona Nkum, one of the biggest communities in the Agona West Municipality, the Municipal Chief Executive for Agona West, Mrs Justina Marigold Assan, has announced.

She said the contract for the project had already been awarded and the site handed over to the contractor for work to begin. “The move is to find lasting solution to the Nkum water crisis which has bedeviled the people for some years now.”

The people of Nkum have not had water flowing through their taps since 2015, after the main pipe lines that supplies water to the community was destroyed by the contractor who constructed the Mensakrom-Nkum main road.

Elders of the community made several efforts through the municipal assembly to the Ghana Water Company Limited for the broken down pipe to be repaired but all efforts proved unsuccessful.

The destruction of the pipeline has also affected two other towns, Agona Odoben and Kuntanase, all in the Asikuma Odoben Brakwa District, whose water is also sourced from the same pipeline.

General Assembly Meeting

Addressing the general meeting of the municipal assembly at the Swedru Town Hall, Mrs Marigold Assan said restoring water supply to the people of Nkum was her utmost priority and responsibility.

She indicated that the absence of water supply to the people had brought untold hardships on the people, since it had negatively affected their daily activities, noting that women and children had to comb around all the time in search of water.

Mrs Assan said “seeing to the restoration of water supply to Nkum will be my biggest achievement since water is a basic necessity for the people and it would boost the local economy as well as put smiles back on the faces of the people”.

Borehole projects

She stated that the assembly’s quest to extend water supply to all communities was still on course and through concerted efforts and lobbying, the municipality had been allocated 25 mechanised boreholes.

She added that the project was being executed by Qatar Charity, a non-governmental organisation (NGO) at GH¢500,000 and that so far, nine out of the total number had been completed and handed over to the beneficiary communities for use.

The communities are Oteiprow, Nyamendam, Amponsah, Samuel, Nkranfo, Kukrantumi, Abodom, Lower Bobikuma, Upper Bobikuma, Kwaman and Mathew. The rest are Ekumasi, Odom, Nkum, Bosompa, Edukoli and W’anyiwaatto.

Improving sanitation

Touching on sanitation, she said that the assembly was collaborating with the World Bank and UNICEF to implement the Community Led Total Sanitation Programme and IDA Quick wins programmes which were aimed at eradicating open defecation as well as supporting households to construct household latrines in the municipality.

To this end, she noted that the assembly had committed itself by providing some households with 400 bags of cement and some quantities of roofing sheets to construct their toilets as part of the first phase of the programme.

She added that a Public Private Partnership arrangement between the assembly and Ghana First, a private investor, had given birth to the construction of toilets at town hall, stadium, Ankyease, Wawase, Old Zongo, Desuenim and Bebianeha, all in Agona Swedru.

“All these timely interventions are tailored towards declaring open defecation free in all communities in the municipality by 2019”, she noted.

Commenting on the assembly’s finances, she said as of September 30, 2018, the assembly had collected a total of GH¢1,148,839.89, representing 66.18 per cent of the Internally Generated Fund (IGF), adding that another amount of GH¢845,577.06 had been received as its share of the District Assemblies Common Fund (DACF) for the same period, respectively.