It is estimated that about 51 per cent of water produced in urban areas by management of Ghana Water Company Limited (GWCL) is unaccounted for due to leaking pipelines, illegal water connections and inability to collect bills from consumers.
This came to light during a review by Civil Society Organisations (CSOs) on the World Bank Urban Water Project in Accra on Thursday.
The project was initiated in 2006 to enable people in urban area to access potable water.
Mr Patrick Apoya, Water and Sanitation Specialist, said the World Bank cited the steadily worsening financial condition of GWCL and the low level of investment in the urban water sector as the main reasons for allocating
103 million dollars to support the sector.
"The investment was also aimed at significantly increasing access to potable water in urban areas, with emphasis on improving accessibility, affordability service reliability to the urban poor and also restore the
financial sustainability of GWCL," he explained.
Mr Apoya noted that the project was aimed at providing at least 50,000 new household connections, majority of them in low income households, provide standpipes in poor urban localities and ensure that 91 million dollars out of the 103 million dollar seed money was used to expand the infrastructure of GWCL.
He said the inability of management of GWCL to function effectively had led to a steady decline of access to potable water in urban areas from over 70 per cent in the late 1990's to about 60 per cent in the early 2000.
In their synthesis, the CSOs called for a review of the World Bank's project since it had failed to address some of the challenges which
necessitated their intervention and appealed to PURC to monitor effectively and efficiently activities of water tanker providers since they sometimes charged exorbitant prices.
They condemned the poor quality of water produced by GWCL in some urban areas to consumers, and called for more access to potable water by poor consumers and a review of the lifeline policy of GWCL.
However, they could not agree on whether GWCL should enjoy private financial support from corporate organisations or not, since it was a state institution which must work to generate its own finances for its activities.
Some of the CSOs which participated in the review were; Ghana Federation for the Disabled, People's Dialogue, National Coalition against
Water Privatisation and Community Network Initiative.
The rest were; Global Neighbourhood Network, Coalition of NGOs in Water and Sanitation, ISODEC and Millennium Women's Coalition.