AVRL and GWCL closing their ranks

Accra, Sept 7, GNA - Aqua Vitens Rand Limited (AVRL) and Ghana Water Company Limited (GWCL), have set out an unusual move to close their ranks to consolidate the gains made in the management of urban water over the past three years.

Mr. Andrew Barber, Managing Director of AVRL told the GNA, "we have proposed five main areas of close collaboration with GWCL and our sector Ministry to ensure transparency in our dealings with each other, and also to consolidate and sustain the gains made in urban water management." The five areas include exchange of personnel of boards of directors, placement of persons from the sector ministry on AVRL board, co-locations of top management offices, and co-location of their communications departments.

Mr. Michael Agyemang, Public Relations Officer of GWCL, confirmed to the GNA that AVRL proposed the areas of close collaboration with GWCL and so much paper work had since gone into its practicability, but that implementation was yet to be carried out. AVRL is on a five-year contract as operator of the urban water distribution network, and GWCL is the grantor of the contract. Over the past three years of AVRL's operations in Ghana, there have been a few incidences of claims and counter claims between the operator and the grantor, regarding who is to be held responsible for the inadequate supply of potable water.

Their respective communications departments have on several occasions been caught in the blame and defensive game, but Mr. Barber said all that is about to stop as the AVRL contract draws to a close in the next two years. "We have asked GWCL to nominate a director from their end to sit on our board and also the GWCL workers union representative is invited to sit on our board. "We are also initiating moves to relocate AVRL management staff to GWCL premises so that we can work more closely at the management level. "Our communications and PR departments will also be co-locating so that they can issue joint communications to the public instead of the current situation where one issues a communication and the other counters it," he said.

Mr. Barber said the representative of the Ministry of Water Resources, Works and Housing (MWRWH) who sat on the board of GWCL, have also been invited to sit on the board of AVRL, all in the spirit of transparency and trust. He said AVRL would also place its representatives on the GWCL board in the same spirit of transparency and close collaboration. The move, he said, would go a long way, not only to build trust and present the two parties as working for one objective, but also to allow the smooth transition of management operations of the urban water distribution network to GWCL within the next two years.

Weeks ago, Mr. Barber said he believed that GWCL staff seconded to AVRL had acquired the skills and attitude to manage the urban water system effectively if the contract of AVRL ended in 2011. Indeed, the backbone of the water management system, the 500,000-dollar Geographical Information System (GIS), was completely developed by a Ghanaian team of young computer scientists at AVRL.

Through the GIS system, the entire urban water distribution network, genuine and illegal customers as well as metered and unmetered water consumers have been captured into a computer data that would ensure easy location of faults in the system, easy location of non-revenue consumers and ultimately effective management and financial viability of the system. Ensuring financial viability by cutting down on non-revenue water by 25 per cent over the five-year period, is the core of the AVRL contract.

Under AVRL, a Customer Care Department, where customers could reach officials of AVRL through a toll-free number, 080040000, has been established. There have also been a number of social responsibility projects sponsored by the mother companies of AVRL, Vitens of Holland and Rand Water of South Africa, to bring water to tens of thousands of people in un-served and under-served communities.

Mr. Barber said much has been achieved but much more remained to be achieved, saying that on the back of the efficient management strategies put in place by AVRL to guarantee financial viability, the treatment plants could now be expanded in order to produce more water. AVRL recently received an additional grant of six million dollars from the Netherlands Embassy to complete the last two-year lap of its repairs, renewal and rehabilitation (RRR) projects.