Mr Joseph Dah, Environmental Health Officer, Krachi East Municipal, has said the inability of Water and Sanitation Management Teams (WSMTs) to account for proceeds from water sales limited the functionalities of boreholes in Njare, Motorway, Adumadum, Matamanu and Ayeremu communities.

Mr Dah addressing the participants during a workshop in Dambai on "Roles and Responsibilities of Water and Sanitation Management Teams (WSMTs)," urged them to adopt prudent accountability measures, such as opening bank accounts and giving frequent accounts on sales of water would enable the community to improve on water situations and expand on their water systems.

"WSMTs should be able to draw effective plans to guide on how we should sell our water to individuals, families and companies as well as raise funds in our little ways through levies and other contributions."

Mr Dah noted that since the water systems became properties of the various communities, proper guidelines must be followed in maintaining and sustaining them.

He called on the WSMTs to identify loopholes that led to loses in water proceeds such as unwillingness of members to pay for the water and work towards eliminating them.

The Officer urged the participants to focus on other sanitation related issues such as open defecation and educate their community members on the need to construct household toilets.

The participants drew action plans on ways of mobilising revenue in Water and Sanitation Management and ways of ensuring a sanitised environment.

Mr Joseph Atango, Krachi East Municipal Community Development Officer, said there was the need for WSMTs to effectively execute their mandates to ensure that projects in their communities were able to meet the purposes for which they were put up.

People for Health (P4H) organised the workshop as part of the project's WASH activities for the year.

SEND GHANA leads a consortium of three organisations working on P4H's five-year project - Penplusbytes and the Ghana News Agency.

The project is aimed at improving access to quality health service delivery in 20 districts from five regions including; the Greater Accra, Eastern, Northern, Volta and the Oti.

It seeks to strengthen organisational and institutional capacities of government and other stakeholders, to attain mutual accountability in the formulation and implementation of policies in health, water, sanitation and nutrition.

Mr Richard Anane Adortse, the Monitoring and Evaluation Officer for P4H encouraged the participants to continue in their voluntary work to guarantee the maintenance of Water, Sanitation and Hygiene (WASH) facilities in their communities.

Hesaid it was expected that the participants would devise strategies to help sustain the projects and programmes in their various communities.

Mr Richard Kofi Hadzi, Accounts Officer, Community Water and Sanitation Agency, Dambai Water Systems, urged WSMTs to form monitoring teams which would supervise activities in regards to accountability and Water sales.

He called on participants from communities that have rivers to ensure that they protected the water bodies from activities of open defecation.