Prepaid water metres for MDAs

September 22, 2008 pg 44

Story: Musah Yahaya Jafaru
THE Ghana Water Company Limited (GWCL) is to install prepaid meters in all ministries, departments and agencies (MDAs), beginning from next year.
The company will also supply prepaid meters to 25,000 of its customers, including pure water producers, hotels, commercial and domestic consumers.
Consequently, the GWCL has submitted an implementation action plan to the government for funding.
The Principal Economist in charge of the Corporation Planning Department of the GWCL, Mr Kwaku Duah-Agyeman, said the replacement of credit meters with prepaid ones was to reduce waste in the use of water, cut costs and ensure reliability in the supply of water.
He was contributing to a discussion at a workshop to disseminate the preliminary findings of a study on water and environmental management in Accra last Thursday.
The study — "Issues influencing values attached to pricing of potable water" — was conducted by the African Technology Policy Studies Network (ATPS), a network of scientists, policy makers, business men and media personnel.
The study was conducted at La and Asigbekope in the Greater Accra Region and Abura and Abeyie in the Central Region. Respondents were asked questions ranging from the availability, quality, price and proximity of sources of water.
Mr Duah-Agyeman indicated that the pilot project, which saw the GWCL supplying prepaid meters to 5,000 customers in Tema and Ashaiman in 2000, had reduced the supply of water to those areas by 41 per cent.
He said with the prepaid meters, the customers were able to manage the use of water, since they knew wastage would go into their credit.
Mr Duah-Agyeman said the prepaid meters would be fixed on walls in the premises and put under lock and key to prevent anybody from tampering with them.
He said customers would be issued with rechargeable credit cards for them to pay in advance the amount of water they needed for a specific time.
Mr Duah-Agyeman explained that the use of the prepaid metres would reduce waste in the use of water and make it possible for the GWCL to supply the conserved water to other customers.
"Consumers will be more responsible, economise and be prudent in the use of water," he stressed.
According to him, the GWCL initially presented the concept paper to the government, saying the government had supported the idea and asked for the implementation action plan which the company had submitted.
He said the company might go into a public-private partnership to install the prepaid meters if the government could not solely fund the project, estimated at thousands of Ghana cedis.
Earlier, the National Co-ordinator of the ATPS, Dr Frederick Amu Mensah, who presented the findings of the study, said the results showed that the quality of and access to potable water had decreased in the country.
He mentioned the wearing of underground pipes and inadequate infrastructure as the causes of the poor quality in water supply.
He said the study indicated that many people used rain water but did not have facilities to harvest it.
It also showed that many people were ready to pay for quality, reasonable cost and sustainable water supply, and that availability, quality, pricing and proximity affected people's choice of water sources.