The Managing Director of Ghana Water Limited (GWL) has revealed the delay in commencement of work for the construction of the Yendi water project is as a result of the external debt restructuring programme.
The government of Ghana was seeking funding support for the project from the Indian EXIM Bank but the project has stalled since President Nana Akufo-Addo cut the sod for work to begin in 2019.
According to Ing Dr Clifford Braimah, all foreign creditors of Ghana are holding onto their funds, stating no bank will release funds when they have not assessed the risks level.
“Ghana is going through a debt exchange programme. They are going to increase the tenure of some of the loans and most of these banks had already provided a lot of money to Ghana and so they are just cutting their loses and that is if there are going to be any default then it should be what they’ve already given not what they’re still going to add” he explained.
The GWL Managing Director made these assertions in a media interview during a working tour of the northern region on Thursday, March 7, 2024.
However, in an interaction with the Overlord of Dagbon in Yendi, Dr Braimah gave an assurance of the Akufo-Addo government’s to provide good drinking water to the people of the Yendi municipality.
“…We’ve assured the King that there are some boreholes that we could drill, so we’re here to assess and identify where we can have good yields then we power them into the system and increase the capacity.”
The daily water demand in Yendi is 3000cb fit and the GWL could only produce at a maximum of 1000cb fit but increased the supply recently to 1,600 as a retooling of their machines in the area.
“Because we cannot keep complaining about the inability of the Indian EXIM Bank to release funds because our people cannot wait; we don’t want them to die before the money comes and so the company has decided that we’re coming in to start putting something on the table.”
Tamale water crisis
In a related, Dr Braimah has blamed the water crisis in the Tamale metropolis to indiscipline on the part of contractors and the residents.
He said road contractors damage their pipelines in the communities without recourse to due process and further blames community members for failing to hold the contractors responsible and only accuse the GWL for not supplying them with water.
He added some unscrupulous people also install inland pumps to draw a lot of water denying others to have water when it is being pushed into the system.
“What we’re doing is that the volumes of water that we pump into Tamale, we would want to reengineer so that we do the demand management to ensure that a minimum of 7days you would have something flowing through your pipe but we would require you to help identify the people who have the inland pumps because when we push the water to you and the person before you decides to suck all the water in the pipe into his reservoir there’s no way water will come to you” he stated.
Meanwhile, Yaa Naa Abukari II in his remarks commended the swift intervention of the Ghana Water Limited and for that matter the government.
He said the situation became so critical that he had to personally intervene to desilt portions of the river Dakar to ensure the people get water, adding the government intervention will complement what was done to bring relief to the community.
The Northern Regional Minister, Shani Alhassan Shaibu, for his part urged Dr Clifford Braimah to speed up work in the execution of the available alternatives to improve the situation.
