The Accra East Region of the Ghana Water Limited (GWL) has started an aggressive exercise to recover over GH¢243.3 million owed by customers.

The “Operation Recover all Arrears” exercise is targeted at recovering the amount owed by 168,398 customers within the 11 districts in the region.

Among the areas the exercise will cover are Accra Central, Accra North, Accra East, Accra North-East, Dodowa, Teshie, Nungua, Dome, Adentan and Kwabenya.

The Regional Communication Officer of GWL, Nana Yaw Barimah Barnie, who made this known to the Daily Graphic last Tuesday, said the indebted customers were largely private consumers, including companies, domestic customers, water sellers and operators of washing bays.

“The list of debtors does not include ministries, departments and agencies (MDAs) because the government has paid all bills for these institutions to the extent that many of their accounts are in credit,” he said.

Nana Barnie said the indebtedness by the private customers of the GWL had plunged the company into huge financial challenges, affecting the company’s ability to meet the water demand and supply gap.

He explained that while millions of dollars was spent in importation of chemicals for the treatment of water, the failure by customers to fully pay for the water they consumed had worsened the financial situation of the company.

“We hope to recover that money by the end of this month (February); and so, we are cautioning all persons who are indebted to the company to take immediate steps to clear their outstanding balance before we take legal action against them,” he stressed.

Illegal connections

In addition to the move to recover money owed the company, he said the GWL team would also check illegal connections by some customers.

Nana Barnie said despite struggling to produce water at exorbitant cost, some customers used unorthodox means of tapping water from GWL’s service lines without paying for it.

He explained that some of those people used in-line booster pump to suck water from the GWL service lines into their houses.

“This is wrong.

The booster pump should be installed in such a way that it sucks water from underground tank into the overhead tank of customers instead of the tapping water from the service line of GWL,” he said.

Electronic payments

The GWL Communication Officer added that as part of measures to ensure effective revenue mobilisation, the company had introduced electronic payment of water bills.

He said with the aid of a mobile application, customers could download the GWL app and use it to pay bills and also access the statement of account.

Nana Barnie said the process had begun for GWL to go paperless in terms of the billing of customers.

“We have started piloting the electronic billing system at the Agbogba District and this will holistically be rolled out to cover the entire region,” he said.

Background

The indebtedness of customers to the GWL is worrying because the company is struggling to meet the water demand and supply gap due to high operational cost and other factors.

While the national demand for water is 321 million gallons per day as of 2024, the GWL produces 199 million gallons, leaving a deficit of 122 million gallons.

If the country’s 42 per cent rate of non-revenue water is anything to go by, it means 134.8 million gallons of what the GWCL produces daily is lost.

Even more, while it costs the GWCL GH?1.2 billion annually to produce water, the company continues to lose 42 per cent of expected revenues.