VEEP LAUNCHES WATER, SANITATION PROJECT ...In Brong Ahafo (SPREAD)

THE Vice-President, Mr John Mahama, has launched a €17 million peri-urban, rural and small town water and sanitation project to provide potable water and improved sanitation infrastructure for people in the Brong Ahafo Region.
The project, which is being jointly financed by the government and the Agence Francaise de Development (AFD), will provide 112 hand-dug wells with pumps, 621 boreholes with pumps, 18 small town and three multi-village water supply systems, 5,000 household latrines, 161 institutional toilets, among others, for the various communities in the regions.
It is envisaged that the project, which is expected to be completed in 2011, will improve access to safe water and sanitation in the participating communities, improve the health and economic status of the beneficiary areas, as well as provide institutional capacity building for sustainability.
The project, which is being implemented by the Ghana Water Company Limited (GWCL) and the Community Water and Sanitation Agency (CWSA), will also contribute to the provision of potable water and good sanitation facilities for over 300,000 people living in the region.
In the Brong Ahafo Region, only 53.51 per cent of the population have access to safe water, but it is estimated that by the end of the project the coverage for rural water in the region would have increased by 13.47 per cent to bring the regional coverage to about 67 per cent.
Launching the project, Mr Mahama expressed appreciation to the French government for providing funds for it.
He recalled that the French government also provided funds for the rural water and sanitation project in the Northern Region which was completed in December 2007 and expressed the hope that the good relationship that existed between the two countries would be strengthened.
He said the provision of potable water was one of the priority areas of the government, adding that as part of measures to accelerate the provision of that essential service for the people, especially those living in deprived communities, the government had allocated GH¢30 million in this year’s budget as an investment in the water and sanitation sub-sector.
The Vice-President stressed that as part of the government’s commitment to ensuring that there was greater acceleration in the delivery of water and sanitation facilities to rural communities, it had reviewed the policy of community contribution to capital cost of water supply facilities by rural communities.
“We do not want a situation where communities will be left out of projects because of their inability to contribute towards capital cost of facilities,” Mr Mahama declared.
He said in line with the transparent administration promised by the government, all stakeholders in the project were to ensure that the right procedures were followed and competitive tendering used in the award of contracts.
He cautioned the contractors and consultants to ensure that quality work was done to enhance the sustainability of the facilities that would be provided, adding, “Contractors and consultants should discard the erroneous impression that our people living in the rural areas are ignorant and lack understanding of development issues.”
He recognised the efforts the New Patriotic Party (NPP) government made to secure the funding for the project and promised that the National Democratic Congress (NDC) administration would continue any good project initiated by the past regime..
The French Ambassador to Ghana, Mr Francis Hurtut, noted that the project was consistent with the Ghana Growth and Poverty Reduction Strategy II (GPRS II), which states, “Improving access to potable water and sanitation is critical to achieving favourable health outcomes, which, in turn, facilitate economic growth and sustained poverty reduction.”
He disclosed that the presence of the AFD in the water and sanitation sector dated back to 1989 and that the AFD was now willing to develop new water and sanitation projects in the country in the coming years.
Mr Hurtut said in strict compliance with the Paris declaration on the efficiency and harmonisation of aid, the institutional and financial design of the project was aligned with national procedures.
The Deputy Minister of Water Resources, Works and Housing, Dr Hanna Louisa Bisiw, disclosed that an estimated $78 million would be required for the CWSA, according to the projections of the Strategic Investment Plan (SIP), to enable the sub-sector to achieve its set targets for the year.
The Chief Executive Officer of the CWSA, Mr Philip Gyau-Boakye, pointed out that as a facilitating agency, the prime goal of the agency was to ensure that there was an increase in the number of people who had access to potable water and good sanitation services.
The acting Managing Director of the GWCL, Mr Andrew Barber, in a speech read on his behalf, admitted that the Brong Ahafo Region had a low level access to potable water supply and sanitation, for which reasons interventions were needed to improve those two sectors, hence the new project.
The Brong Ahafo Regional Minister, Mr Kwadwo Nyamekye-Marfo, in his welcoming address, noted that owing to the perennial water shortage that hit most of the farming communities in the region, some of the farming settlements were abandoned by the farmers, who left for the major towns and villages where they could get potable water to drink and also for other domestic uses.