Three regions to benefit from 80m Euro water facility

Koforidua, Sept. 16, GNA - Rural and smaller communities in the Eastern, Central and the Volta Regions would soon benefit from an 80 million Euro facility for the provision of boreholes, small town water systems and other mechanized systems.

Mr Clement Bugase, Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of the Community Water and Sanitation Agency (CWSA), has told reporters in Koforidua on Friday when the Board of Directors for the Agency, made a familiarization tour to the Eastern Region.

He said the project, sponsored by two international bodies, aimed at meeting the Millennium Development Goal (MDG) target of 76 per cent potable water coverage for rural and smaller communities by 2015.

The donors, the European Investment Bank (EIB) and Agence Français de Development (AFD), a French Development agency, are providing 40 million Euros each.

Mr Bugase said the CWSA had already finished the technical negotiations with the donors for the provision of the facility.

“We have gone through the technical negotiations and the proposal is now at the Ministerial level where the Finance Ministry would soon finish with the financial proposal.”

“After that they will pass it on to Cabinet and finally to Parliament for approval,” he said.

Mr Bugase said another technical negotiation had been done between the Agency and Caspian Energy, an investment company from Azerbaijan in Europe, and expressed the hope that by the end of the year, the necessary procedures would be completed for works to start early next year.

He said the CWSA was there to facilitate the provision of good drinking water systems for the rural areas and small towns and was doing that that by sourcing funds from international organizations such as the Danish International Development Agency (DANIDA) and the two others.

The Agency’s Board of Directors later paid a courtesy call on Dr Kwasi Akyem Apea-Kubi, the Eastern Regional Minister, and inspected projects of the CWSA.

Dr Apea-Kubi lauded the Agency with the Board of Directors for working hard to ensure that rural communities had safe drinking water but urged them to ensure that same water was extended to all communities in the region.

He also advised the board that, “initiation of such projects should always involve members of the communities so that they can know the inside-out of the project.”

He said, when that was done, members of the communities would take good care of the projects even when nobody told them to do so.