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Ghana Water Company, why?

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Large sections of Ghana, even in the capital, Accra, do not have and so need potable water – water collected from neat rivers, treated and sent to residential areas via pipelines by the Ghana Water Company (GWC) – yet water treated with the Ghanaian taxpayers money goes waste when a main pipeline is leaking or bursts and when the GWC is called they refuse to respond.

There is such a leaking underground pipeline directly in front of Royal Foam and carpet sellers point at the traffic light where the Accra-Circle Road comes from Niagara Hotel and heads towards Calvary Baptist Church and Mr. Biggs in Adabraka, Accra.

This is the spot of the leaking underground pipeline.  Walking along there one could sometimes hear people murmuring or talking about it and saying e.g., “Oh Ghana?” or “Is this Ghana?”, but how many call the GWC or 191 to report it?

The problem is that the pipeline has been leaking for about five weeks now and if an approximation of 100 gallons of treated water is lost per day it is easy to calculate how much has been lost over the last five weeks and how much cash Ghana Water has lost and continues to lose.

That aside, the news is that leakage at that point is an age-old problem and over the last several years GWC workers have been on the spot to dig dirt and repair that leakage at least four times only for the water to start leaking again few months after each repair.

Looking closely one could see smaller circles within the larger circle (picture centre.)  Those smaller circles are billowing(s) through which water from the faulty underground pipe is leaking.

Ti-Kelenkelen ever wrote about a leaking GWC main water pipeline joint at the Ridge Regional Hospital roundabout right behind the Electoral Commission where its wall meets that of the Ghana Airways flats on the Castle Road in Adabraka.

That pipeline leaked for years and was repaired less than two weeks after Ti-Kelenkelen went asking questions aboutitin the flats and at the filling station across the street from the flats.

Treated water streaming away into the gutter.  In the top left corner is Trans-Africa University College, Adabraka.

The questions that pop up then are: Was the act of leaving the pipeline leaking intentional?  If it was intentional, what was the goal; was it to keep it as a maintenance problem that could be repeated year after year on the company budget so that the allocated amount could be creamed off year after year by some persons in GWC management?  Will that not make it a case of what Supreme Court judge, Justice Jones Dotse refers to as Create, Loot and Share?

The repaired main water pipeline joint (within the rectangular concrete enclosure). In the background are parts of EC and the flats.

On the leaking pipe at the traffic light on the road leading to Calvary Baptist Church, Ti-Kelenkelen met GWC workers working on an underground water joint one evening at the location of the June 3/4 tragedy, Kwame Nkrumah Circle, and told them about it (the leakage) and showed them where it is.  That was during the just-ended Christmas-New Year holidays, yet the pipeline is still leaking.

(Pictures by Ti-Kelenkelen)

 

Ti-Kelenkelen

…with Yirenkyi Lamptey


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