Oguaa faces another water shortage

Cape Coast, May 9, GNA - Water supply in the Cape Coast Municipality and its environs has been reduced to 40 per cent following a drop in the water level in the Brimsu Dam from 4.6 metres to 3.5 metres.

The Central Regional Director of the Ghana Water Company Limited (GWCL), Mr Godwin Dovlo, who announced this when he took newsmen round to assess the situation on Tuesday, said the Company initially cut down supply to 60 per cent when the water level fell to 3.5 metres in late March and April 2006.

He attributed the situation to the current rainfall pattern and said but for the dredging of the dam, which was undertaken in February to increase the intake of water in the dam, water supply would have ceased completely.

He said the company had as a result resorted to the rationing of water to consumers and if the situation did not improve tankers would be used to provide water at an estimated cost of 1.2 billion cedis between now and May 31.

He, however, expressed the hope that the situation would have improved by then and urged consumers to bear with the Company, as a long-term solution as being sought to curtail the perennial water crises.

Early this year, the Minister of Water Resources, Works and Housing, Mr Hackman Owusu-Agyemang cut-the-sod for the commencement of a project to draw water from the Pra River at Sekyere-Heman to the Brimsu Dam at Cape Coast to curtail the perennial water shortage.