'This is leadership pandemic' – KNUST lecturer describes Tema water shortage

Head of History and Political Science Department at the Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology (KNUST) Dr. Samuel Adu-Gyamfi, has described the acute water shortage in the Tema metropolis that has resulted in residents fetching water from gutters, as a “leadership pandemic” in the country.

He said this in an interview with Johnnie Hughes on the New Day show on TV3, Wednesday, April 28.

Dr. Adu-Gyamfi was reacting to a report by TV3 on the lack of pipe-borne water flowing in the area that has resulted in acute water shortage in Tema, forcing residents to collect water from gutters to use for their daily chores.

He said, “I mean when we hold positions, we must be responsible, we owe the people we are supposed to serve a certain duty of care. I mean, our science teachers, if they are still around, we know that water must be tasteless, odourless, and colorless, those who work in that area, who are in charge of water, who are supposed to produce water understand the science of water than we do, at least they know that this can cause virulent diarrhea right, among other things.

“Look this is leadership pandemic, leadership pandemic, that is what we are suffering from, in terms of the kind of leadership that is being offered in that jurisdiction of that area concerning the provision of water. In this time and age, we must know that country-wide we should be aiming at giving every individual, every Ghanaian clean water.

“Efforts to produce water, clean water for this country and for Greater Accra started in the colonial period and these efforts ought to have been improving, if you like, with increasing population, expansion of housing, and the actual geography of Accra, among other things”.

He added that “we should have had a built-on in terms of our development, understand that if you are developing an area, there are fundamental things you have to look for, the proper mapping of the area or location, roads leading to the area, proper gadgets and then water, provision of water for access.

“There are several housing units, not only in Accra, Kumasi, among other areas that are depending on hand-dug wells to be able to supply their housing with water, and if you tie that into the extent at which we are polluting our water with that galamsey and all that, and destroying our water, it means that it will take us a lot of resources or money to be able to produce clean water.

“We are told, from what you just said, I mean, the science is getting better with one of our universities, UMaT looking forward to be able to give us some solution to that but the question is that there are a lot of questions we have not been able to answer and today, in Accra, in Tema, we are talking about this, it has always been our story, the story of our political folks, the story of those at the periphery, people are literally drinking dirty water and using, I mean, dirty water for domestic chores”.