GWCL rations water in Sekondi-Takoradi and its environs

The Ghana Water Company Limited (GWCL) in the Western Region has for the past one month been rationing water in the Sekondi-Takoradi Metropolitan Area due to the growing demand in supply and limited rainfall in the region the year.

The situation had resulted in a low inflow of raw water into river bodies, particularly the Pra River, where the Ghana Water Company Limited (GWCL) draws water for processing and distribution to the Sekondi-Takoradi Metropolis and the Wassa East District.

Following the occurrence, the Ghana Water Company’s intake points at Daboase and Bussum-Do in the Wassa East District have low water levels, making it difficult to extract enough water from them for treatment thereby, leading to the erratic water supply.

Speaking in an interview with the Ghana News Agency, the Western Regional Public Relations Officer (PRO) of the GWCL, Nana Yaw Barima Barnie indicated that the company’s dam site at the Inchaban Head Works in the Shama District has equally been affected by the low inflows of water.

“The major challenge is that we are having a limited flow of water and we were expecting rains even in September to October, but that did not happen. Limited rains now is resulting in low inflows into our basin,” he explained.

According to him, the only solution available to the Company was for customers to conserve water while they worked to ensure that they met the increasing demands and called on the public to store water and use it judiciously.

He said the situation had forced his outfit to start early rationing of water from September instead of the usual December or early January when such controlled distribution was done.

He noted that production levels were currently between three million gallons and 5.6 million gallons daily which he considered inadequate to meet the demands of the public.

Nana Barnie explained that if there were limited inflows, it would affect their production and that in the recent past, the Inchaban intake had been recording about 979,000 gallons instead of two million gallons, which had characterised the shortfall.

The PRO further explained that since its intake points along the Pra River were just water basins, his outfit only collected raw water for treatment and the rest flowed freely into the sea as the river was not dammed.

He pointed out that damming the Pra River would have been the ideal situation, but it would come with a huge cost and social impacts, which could cause the extinction of some aquatic species, huge losses to forests, the disappearance of birds in floodplains, erosion of deltas, wetlands, and farmlands, and many other irreversible impacts that have to be considered when planning to dam a river.