Power challenges causing water shortage – GWCL

The Ghana Water Company Limited (GWCL) has been challenged with combined factors of the dry season and high demand, Citinewsroom has reported.

This development, the Managing Director of GWCL, Clifford Braimah, indicated that it has led to some distribution issues.

“Demand has increased, and you have the same quantity of supply. Ultimately, if you share it among the population, the capital will go down and that is one of the reasons,” he said.

Mr Braimah also said his outfit is confronted with an unstable power supply, saying it is a “very big problem”.

“Of late, we have had some power challenges and all our systems are connected to the national grid so any time you have a power problem, even if it is five minutes, it will take us hours to build up our pressure.”

Mr. Braimah indicated that the power supply challenge has contributed to water plants producing below capacity.

“In Tamale, for example, we have 45,000 cubic metres capacity but because of the electricity fluctuations, sometimes we do 28,000 cubic metres.”

“At a point last year, we even did 16,000 cubic metres,” he added.

The GWCL boss stated that about 12 million persons connected to the water supply system are currently on a rationing schedule.

“What we need to do is ration the water so that almost a bigger population will touch our water within a week.”

Questioned on why the public was not aware of the rationing schedules, Mr Braimah said various district offices had the schedule and were also supposed to be sensitising communities.

“They use their vans. They have telegrams for their customers, and they put those things on,” he said.