Gonse is just 21.9 km north west of Accra and 7.2 km from the Weija Dam, the dam that supplies treated and piped water to about half of Accra, yet no household in the community is, and has ever been, connected to the main urban water supply network in Ghana.
“The Ghana Water Company started laying the main pipeline here about ten years ago. For whatever reason, the project has been stalled since 2010. As a result, no house here has ever been connected,” says the Assembly Member for the area, Honorable Reuben Ofori Fiagbedzi, affectionately called Foyoo.
Residents of Gonse, about 30,000 people according to the Weija Gbawe municipal authorities, rely on water tanker operators and household water vendors and this they have been doing for survival all the time.
“The annoying thing is that sometimes you see the main pipe burst and water gushing out just like that. Then they come and fix it. You see? There is water right inside that pipe and yet they refuse to distribute. Are we not Ghanaians?” Asked an angry resident.
As a result of the failure of the urban water utility to distribute water in the community, they have had to buy water at a price several times higher than those with direct connection elsewhere. Water tanker operators buy from the utility at commercial rates, add their operational cost and resell to household vendor. Household vendors also add their operational costs before they also sell to others in buckets and other containers. The popular 20 – 25 litre ‘Kufuor Gallon’ for instance is sold for between 70 and 80 pesewas while those with direct connection would pay less that a quarter of that price. To ease the pressure on the people, a few households have constructed boreholes and sell the water to neighbours at 40 – 50 pesewas. However, users claim the borehole water is salty and not suitable for drinking and even washing of clothes.
From April to June 2020, the government of Ghana decided to absorb the cost of water for everybody nationwide to mitigate the effects of Covid-19 and to encourage regular handwashing. According to Foyoo, the Municipal Assembly installed a 10,000 litre water tank in the community and was filled three times a week to provide free water from government. At a group discussion involving landlords, water vendors and water consumers, it was learnt from the residents, however, that the location of the tank benefited only a few residents as it was too far from the rest. Four out of the eight participants claimed they did not even hear about the presence of free water in the community.
Most shops in the community had no handwashing stations to protect themselves and their clients from the spread of Covid-19. One woman narrated a scene where a shopkeeper would personally ration water at her handwashing station to control the use of water. According to her, water was too scarce and expensive in the community to allow each visitor to wash hands for 20 – 25 seconds. She would usually stop it around some ten seconds.
Five minutes-walk from Foyoo’s residence is a beautiful pond called Yoomo. According to residents, Yoomo, popularly called Sonitra is a very deep pond that was created by accident in 1987, when the SONITRA Construction company was quarrying stones for road construction. Since then, the quarry site has held this lake that has never dried up and never shown any sign of possibly of drying up.
“The water is very fresh and that is what we all used to drink directly and untreated some years back. People have started building very close to it and are beginning to pollute it but I think the Ghana Water Company can protect and treat this water to supply the people of Gonse and Joma,” Foyoo suggests. According to him, if pumping water from the Weija Dam to supply the people of Gonse and Joma is the challenge, he believed that Sonitra would be a good, safe and cheaper alternative at least for the two communities under his jurisdiction.
Elsewhere at Chorkor, a low-income urban community in Accra, residents say they fully enjoyed the free water supply from government. According to residents interviewed, four high capacity water storage tanks were erected in the community and arrangements made with water tanker operators to regularly fill them. There were perceptions that free access to water had greatly influenced an improvement in their handwashing behaviours for protection against Covid-19 infections. Household vendors interviewed, however complained of negative effects on their businesses as they were rather compelled to sell at 50 pesewas per Kufuor Gallon (25 litres container) as against the usual price of 1.00 cedis prior to the free water package, while there were low sales in general. According to opinion leaders interviewed, about 80% of households have direct connection to the GWCL main lines.
In collaboration with the End Water Poverty Campaign, the Coalition of NGOs in Water and Sanitation (CONIWAS) is undertaking a project on Rights to Water for selected communities. The project aims to support communities without sustainable and adequate access to water to advocate for better Water services in their communities. Gonse is one of the communities identified for the advocacy support by the Weija Gbawe Municipal Assembly.
By Emmanuel Addai