Privatised water should at least flow from the taps

In Teshie, an old fishing village that is now a suburb of the Ghanaian capital Accra, residents buy water by the bucket from private vendors by because their taps have been dry for five years. They are fed up with the situation and have threatened not to vote in parliamentary and presidential elections due in December unless the government does something to resolve the crisis . “This water crisis has affected the whole economy of my area. Food prices have shot up. Some petty traders have stopped selling food because of high water prices. Truancy among school kids is on the increase. Cars regularly knock down people who cross the roads to look for water,” Samuel Ayi Tettey, a local assembly representative in Teshie told IRIN. President John Kufuor, who is seeking re-election for a second term, has controversially decided to tackle the chronic water shortage afflicting Teshie and many other towns across Ghana, by bringing in the private sector to provide much-needed investment. For the past five years, not a single drop of water has come out of the pipes in Teshie, which is home to about 70,000 people. Instead, residents have to pay private vendors between six and 10 US cents for a four-gallon bucket of water transported to Teshie by tanker truck. In times of severe water shortages the price can shoot up to 16 cents. That represents a big slice of the family income in a country where the minimum wage is only US$1 per day. If the water supply system were working properly the residents of Teshie would be paying less than one cent for four gallons of water from the state-owned Ghana Water Company delivered through their taps. Now posters and banners that have begun appearing all over town with the slogan “No Water, No Vote.”. “That is the voice of the people!” Tettey declared. “Most of the residents say they will not vote if the water situation remains the same. It shows public disappointment in politicians who come and go but do nothing about our plight,” he continued. The government says US$1.6 billion of investment will be needed over the next decade provide safe drinking water to every Ghanaian family by 2015, but it can not fund that sort of money from the public purse. Its chosen solution is to contract out the water supply system in Accra and Ghana’s other main towns out to a major international utilities company. This has already been done successfully in neighbouring Cote d’Ivoire and in Senegal. The World Bank is encouraging this move by offering a US$100 million interest-free loan to help overhaul Ghana’s increasingly decrepit water supply infrastructure. And bilateral donors, including the UK and the Scandinavian countries are putting a further US$50 million on the table. An international tender will be launched in June to find a private partner for the Ghana Water Company, according to Emmanuel Nkrumah, Director of the Urban Water Supply Project. The government hopes to sign a deal with the chosen company sometime next year once the December elections are safely out of the way. Meanwhile, according to the government’s own figures, 50 percent of Ghana Water Company’s daily production of 120 million gallons is being lost through leaks, illegal tapping and unpaid bills. In Accra, a city of more than four million people, only the smartest residential areas where diplomats, wealthy businessmen and senior government officials tend to live, can count on a regular water supply. However, several non-governmental organizations oppose the privatization plan. The Integrated Social Development Centre (ISODEC), a non-profit organisation concerned with social and economic rights, is one of the fiercest critics. “It is the duty of the public sector to ensure that water gets to everybody,” said Ernest Tay Awoosah the Deputy Executive Director of ISODEC. He would like to see a wider debate on the issue to look at alternatives before the water company is sold off. “Let us open a national debate. Let us sit down as a country on this private participation in our water delivery systems. This is a vital issue,” he said. “Only then can we look at the various options available to us and find out how best we can raise up that amount instead of bringing in a private operator.” Teshie’s plight is no different from that of most urban areas in Ghana. The suburb is served by the Kpong Water Works, 60 km to the north. But while Teshie’s population has quadrupled over the past 40 years, the water works has seen no significant expansion since it was built in the early sixties. Meanwhile factories have sprung up nearby taking huge quantities of water that previously went for residential use. Those who can afford it have tanks to store water when the taps actually do run for a few hours at a time two or three times a week. Nkrumah says that after privatization companies will be made to pay higher rates than domestic customers for the water they use. “The Private-Public Partnership will ensure that these institutions are connected to the main water pipeline and also pay economic rates for the water they use,” he told IRIN. “At the same time, it will ensure that those who need water for the public good such as for drinking, cooking and washing have access to the product,” he stressed. “Our project will begin early next year,” Nkrumah went on. “The bulk of the [initial] US $150 million investment will go into civil works development. The rest will go into staff retrenchment at Ghana Water Company and also into a social connection fund to ensure that the poor get water.” The people of Teshie are not for or against privatization. They just want to know that they can get clean water easily and reliably at an affordable price. “It will depend. If the people will get water at affordable rates and when they want it, they will pay for it,” Tettey, the elected local government representative said.” Currently, it is not all people in my area who can afford to pay 1,000 cedis (10 US cents) for a bucket of water,” he added. The Ghana Water Company did build a local reservoir and overhead tank at Teshie to store several thousand gallons of water to help ease local supply problems, but this has never worked and local people describe the project as a “white elephant.” “Some people now ration water and use a bucket to bathe three kids. Others might prefer to bathe in the sea and later buy a bucket of water for the day. Water is essential to us. If the new prices are right, we will welcome it,” Tettey said. But the price people will have to pay a privatized water company to keep their taps running 24 hours a day remains unclear. “Up to now, no one is telling us about the conditions that are driving this contract,” ISODEC’s Awoosah told IRIN. Officials at Ghana Water Company say any rise is likely to be fairly modest. They also point out that it will up to Ghana’s Public Utilities Regulatory Commission (PURC), not the private operator, to determine appropriate tariffs. “Whatever it is, I do not envisage the official cost of water to go beyond 80 cedis (less than once US cent) per bucket under the private-public partnership. This is enough to give us full cost recovery unless the cedi depreciates badly against the dollar,” Nkrumah said. He maintains that the private operator’s role in the project will be to inject efficiency and good management practices into Ghana Water Company within five years. This should ultimately allow it to reduce leakages and provide more water to consumers. “People are only using the poor as a propaganda tool” Nkrumah went on. “Even if it comes up officially to 100 cedis per bucket, is it not far cheaper than the 600 to 1,000 cedis at which the poor currently buy water from private vendors,”. On the streets of Teshie, they are doing good business. A tanker truck can fill up at the water works for US$13 and sell on its precious cargo for nearly three times as much to the beleaguered residents who queue up with their buckets and wait.