The Ghana Water Company Limited (GWCL) intends to build a new water supply system as a long-term measure to meet the water needs of commercial users in the industrial enclave of Tema, Kpone and its environs.

The project forms part of efforts by GWCL to improve system performance to meet the ever-growing customer needs.

The Managing Director of the Ghana Water Company Limited, (GWCL), Dr Clifford Braimah, disclosed this in Tema yesterday (July 6) at a stakeholders' meeting with representatives of industrial and commercial water users in Tema.

He explained that the increasing population and industries without a commensurate investment in water treatment and distribution had resulted in a shortfall in supply.

To this end, the GWCL has laid out strategies to enhance the provision of water to industries. These strategies, Dr Braimah indicated, included a proposal to build a new production plant dedicated to the supply of water to commercial users.

New plant

The project will be aimed at providing a dedicated transmission line to serve businesses operating in the industrial enclave.

It would be based on the Volta Lake at Aveyime and would comprise intake, transmission pipelines and water treatment plant and reservoir.

The plant will utilise the Volta River at Aveyime as its source and will also involve the construction of transmission mains through Dawa to Tema and Kpone which will be dedicated to the distribution of water to commercial consumers.

Feasibility study

According to Dr Braimah, the Tema booster station, which received supply from the Kpong Headworks, currently supplies both domestic and commercial clients and over the years, the population of Tema and industries had grown and outstripped supply.

He said the feasibility study for the development of the new dedicated production plant has started and that by September this year, the path management of GWCL wants to take to get the facility constructed would be more clear.

“We want to give direction to the system that given the right environment and support, GWCL will be able to take certain interventions for some specific actions on their own”.

Dr Braimah said management of GWCL had submitted technical and financial proposals to the sector ministry in respect of the project, and were currently in discussion with the Ministry of Finance with the view of accessing funds for the project.

Industrialisation

Dr Braimah said Ghana's industrialisation drive would not attain the needed results if he country was unable to sustain water supply to businesses that were set up, adding that since most industries depended on water supply from the GWCL it was necessary to take the necessary steps to sustain water production to meet the demand.

Interim measure

Responding to concerns of some of the commercial firms about inadequate supply of water, Dr Braimah said looking at the demand from the commercial users, GWCL was taking some emergency measures by realigning its supply network to serve commercial users in the night when demand from the domestic side was low.

He, however, urged the firms to increase storage of water while it flowed through their taps, so that in the event of low pressures or no flow, they could resort to their storage.

Service challenges

Some of the participants raised concerns about the quality of service delivered by the GWCL, and appealed to the management to take steps to improve water supply to meet their demands..

One of the participants, Mr Abraham Oppong, Finance Manager at Olam Ghana, a food processing company at Kpone industrial enclave, bemoaned the periodic and frequent water shortages experienced when it came to supply of water to firms in the industrial enclave..

He said businesses experienced water shortages without any announcement and in instances when there was an announcement, GWCL did not adhere to the scheduled period, a situation that compelled companies to resort to private water tanker operators for supplies at exorbitant cost, not to talk of concerns of water quality..

He said for instance that in the month of April 2021, his company spent over GH c 60,000 on water tanker services due to a disruption in service by GWCL, indicating that the amount was double the payment they made to the GWCL..