Wa: Water consumers owe GWCL GH¢200,000

Customers of the Ghana Water Company Limited (GWCL) in the Wa Township are owing the company GH¢200,000, compelling it to engage the services of a lawyer to retrieve the money.

It has started contacting the defaulters to come forward with payment plans to settle their arrears, Mr Diekuu B. Cletus, the Production and Water Quality Assurance Manager of the GWCL, said on Monday.

He said, so far, the names of 100 defaulters had been submitted to the Public Utility Regulatory Commission (PURC) to help educate the defaulters to settle their arrears.

Ten individual debtors had also been arraigned for refusing to honour their debts.
Mr Diekuu made this known after a tour of the stretch of the Black Volta to mark this year’s World Water Day at Jambusso in the Wa West District on the theme: “Accelerating Change.”

It was to expose students and stakeholders to bring their expertise on board to accelerate change in the management of water resources.

The Black Volta River at Jambusso serves as an intake point for water supply to the Wa Township and other communities, and the water level in the basin, as of 22 March 2023, was 4.12 metres and rises to 13.28 metres during its peak in the rainy season.

The students were from the Wa Senior High, St. Francis Xavier Minor Seminary, Wa Senior High Technical School, and the Jamiat Islamic Girls Senior High School.

Mr Diekuu urged them to act as agents of change, advocating the protection and sustainable utilisation of water resources to help address access to safe water.

He appealed to the students to launch a sustained campaign in the communities to change behaviours to stop the wanton destruction of the environment along rivers and pollution of the Black Volta.

Huge deposits of mercury, cyanide and other chemicals through illegal mining activities are dumped inside the Black Volta basin, raising production cost of treating water, he said.

“If sustainable mining practices are not adopted, it would get to a stage when the water in the basin could no longer be processed and that could cause the company to shut down its operations.’’

“Problems with water affect everybody because people interact with water to survive.”

Mr Diekuu said everybody had a role to play when it came to water management and stakeholders must support the GWCL to manage the water to ensure good health.