Weija, March 05, GNA - Only about 400,000 Ghanaians nationwide who are connected to the Ghana Water Company metering system pay water tariffs.
Mr Kwaku Botwe, a Director at the Company told the Ghana News Agency that the situation was serious and had to be holistically addressed to find a solution to the water problems in the country.
He said, even if the population of Greater Accra alone was three million with an average of five people living in a house, then about 600,000 housing units could be identified to pay water tariffs in the region.
Mr Botwe said these when the Minister of State in-Charge of Water Resources, Mrs Cecelia Obeng Dapaah visited the Weija Water Treatment Plant Station and the Weija Dam to find out how work on the expansion of the facilities was progressing.
Mr Botwe said if there was an increase in the number of consumers who paid for water then the tariffs should rather be reducing.
"But as it is now, we are now dividing the entire cost of water production to the 400,000 consumers."
The facilities at Weija were being upgraded to increase the volumes of water produced at the station from the current 40 million gallons a day to 55 million gallons a day.
Mrs Dapaah expressed happiness with the progress of work but reiterated President's Kufuor's interest in the project and urged the engineers to complete it even before schedule.
She said when completed it would, to a large extent, cushion the difficulties many people go through now to get water, especially in Accra and its environs.
Mr Daniel Momallah, Regional Chief Manager, Ghana Water Company Accra East said currently those in Accra East such as Cantonment, Labone, La, and Osu were supplied with water from Weija only at the weekends.
He said with the additional 15 million gallons of water a day, the supply would be improved tremendously. He said other areas that Weija would serve under the Accra West-East Interconnection project would be Legon, Madina, Ashongman, Kwabenya and Adenta, and Ashaley Botwe.
