The Senior Minister, Mr Yaw Osafo-Maafo, has cut the sod for the rehabilitation and expansion of the Daboase Water Treatment Plant. The restoration and enlargement works are expected to improve water supply to the Sekondi-Takoradi metropolis and its environs.

The project is being financed with a credit facility from the Austrian Export Credit Agency (OeKB) at a cost of €70 million.

When completed, the water system will deliver 100,000 cubic metres of water — approximately 22 million gallons — a day to consumers.

Poverty alleviation

Mr Osafo-Maafo said the project would contribute significantly towards alleviating poverty in the metropolis, as well as contribute to improve the standard of living of the people.

He said the government was committed to ensuring that there was development on all fronts, and that it would not relent in its effort to increase water availability access to all sections of society.

“By providing social infrastructure, the government is creating an enabling environment to attract businesses into our local communities,” he said.

The Senior Minister said when basic physical and organisational structures and facilities were improved, investors would take advantage of them and venture into programmes initiated by the government, such as the One-district, One-factory enterprise, and also establish small and medium -scale factories.

Increasing demand
The Minister of Sanitation and Water Resources, Ms Cecilia Abena Dapaah, said due to growth in population, the Sekondi-Takoradi metropolis would require an expansion in social infrastructure, adding that the enlargement of the water system in the metropolis was one of such steps.

“It is the government’s policy that by 2030 all people living in Ghana will have access to potable water, in line with the UN Sustainable Development Goal Six,” she said.

The Managing Director of the Ghana Water Company Ltd (GWCL), Dr Clifford Braimah, said at the moment the company was operating a piped water supply system in the metropolis and its surrounding areas from surface water sourced from the Pra River at Daboase and the River Anakwari at Inchaban.

He said the two systems were constructed in 1969 and 1928, respectively, and were rehabilitated and expanded in 2004.

He added that following the initial restoration works, the installed capacity of the two plants (Inchaban and Daboase) stood at 45,000 cubic metres or about 9.9 million gallons per day.

Dr Braimah said, however, that currently the average joint production capacity of the two plants was 30,000 cubic metres a day (about 6.6 million gallons), as against a daily demand of 90,000 cubic metres or 19.8 million gallons.

200,000 cubic metres

The demand, he said, was expected to grow to 200,000 cubic metres per day (about 44 million gallons) by 2040.

He said the shortfall in supply had compelled the GWCL to ration water in the metropolis.

He said the decision to rehabilitate the Daboase Water Treatment Plant was timely, as it would ease the water burden situation in the metropolis and its environs.

The rehabilitation works, he said, would comprise improvement in the dam and the water intake structure on the Pra River at Daboase and the construction of a raw water pipeline to the treatment plant.

Dr Braimah said the project also involved the construction of a 47-kilometre transmission pipeline from the water treatment plant to Sekondi-Takoradi and other areas.

The Western Regional Minister, Mr Kobina Okyere Darko Mensah, welcomed the project and said: “We all owe it a duty to engage in acts that will ensure the longevity of this facility in order for it to serve its intended purpose.”