Tamale: The ‘urban city’ whose residents now depend on dams for survival

The acute water shortage that has hit Ghana’s third-largest city and the Northern Regional capital, Tamale, is now compelling most residents to depend on dams for their domestic use.

The hardest-hit communities are mostly located in the Tamale South and Tamale North Constituencies, which now rely on dams that were hitherto used for agriculture and fishing purposes.

Less than one-third of the city now has frequent water supply since the turn of the year. The situation has been compounded by the harsh weather conditions, with temperatures rising above 40 degrees Celsius daily in the past few weeks.

This, coupled with the pressures on the few dams around has caused the dams to start drying up, leaving residents to their faith.

The Ghana Water Company has blamed the harsh weather conditions and faulty

equipment at the Nawuni Water Intake Point for the drastic cut in supply to most parts of the Metropolis.

With no rain in sight yet and little information on when the much anticipated Tamale Water Expansion project will begin, it is unclear when uninterrupted supply will be restored. This has put pressure on Members of Parliament and parliamentary candidates in the city to look for alternative sources of water supply for struggling residents.

While some are acquiring the services of private water tanker services, others have started dredging the dried-up dams to be able to collect water for residents' use.

At Kobilmahagu, one of the hardest-hit communities in the Tamale South Constituency, where residents claim the GWCL has not pumped water to them in over a month, their only other source of water is the Kobilmahagu dam, which has now dried up.

The dam served four other communities, including Kukuo, Jakarayili, Kpambegu, and parts of Vitting. Residents have said they now have to travel several kilometers to Fuo or Ghana Senior High School (Ghanasco) to access their dam; however, the Fuo dam has now also dried up.

“It doesn’t look like we’re in Tamale. We suffer a lot just to find water, and it’s even not safe to drink. We go as far as Fuo and Ghanasco to get water from the dam. We were still able to manage that, but now the dam has dried up,” Ayisha Alhassan, a resident, said.

Alhaji Fuseini Musah commences the dredging of Kobilmahagu Dam in the Tamale South Constituency:

The NPP parliamentary candidate for Tamale South Constituency, Alhaji Fuseini Musah, has commenced the full dredging of Kobilmahagu Dam to help reduce the suffering of the people.

He said the dredging was part of efforts to ensure communities had temporary sources of water while looking for alternatives to address the challenges.

Alhaji Fuseini said he would get water tankers to supply potable water to some of the communities to ensure residents had some safe and treated water for their domestic usage.

He appealed to the GWCL to “try and at least be serving communities like Kobilmahagu once a month so that people can have some very safe water for domestic use while depending on the dam for other purposes.”.

The parliamentary candidate said his team was going to dredge other dams in the

constituency.