[ 2017-01-26 ]

GWCL Bleeds Over Mismanagement - Pays $2m Monthly For 25 Years On Desalination
The finances of the Ghana water Company are
currently suffering as a result of negligence on
the part of some of the company’s managers who
failed to take measures to prevent the
deterioration of strategic equipment.

Having superintended over the collapse of some of
its stations, these senior figures persuaded the
then NDC government to consider desalination as an
option.

Following their advice, a contract was signed
between the GWCL and Messrs Befessa Ltd, the
contractors and operators of the Teshie-Nungua
desalination plant.

Messrs Befesa Ltd was contracted to build the
desalination plant, operate to defray its cost and
hand over to the GWCL after 25years. Currently
GWCL, on a monthly basis, pays a whopping $
2million to the company, a payment which will
continue for the next 25 years.

There are fears that the company will soon be
rendered bankrupt as it also spends an average GHC
1.2million on electricity bills to power the plant
which is powering half its expected capacity.

Consumers are bearing the brunt of the contract
signed by powerful and politically well-connected
personalities and management members who allegedly
reap huge sums of monies from these monthly
payments to the company.

Meanwhile, information reaching this paper
indicates that some chief managers and other top
shots of GWCL are already mounting pressure on
some personalities and leading members of the Nana
Akufo-Addo’s government to secure appointment as
MD.

There are already calls for thorough
investigations into their roles in all these
contracts that are causing the company to bleed.

Readers will recall that as a reaction to poor
service quality and low efficiency of the urban
water utility, the World Bank supported the
process of private sector participation in the
water sector to improve its performance and
rehabilitate and extend the infrastructure.
Therefore, after careful considerations, a 5-year
management contract was awarded to Aqua Vitens
Rand Limited from 2006 -2011 under the previous
NPP administration.

Angered by the decision taken by the then NPP
government, some bigwigs within the company vowed
to sabotage the efforts of the AVRL and ensure
that the company would not be able to reach or
meet expectations and terms enshrined in its
management contract.

Some chief managers right from the inception of
AVRL were not supportive of the move simply
because the management contract was taken away
from them.

The band of saboteurs pushed for the abrogation of
the AVRL contract, even though the company asked
for an extension to fine-tune and complete some
projects that were ongoing.

Management staff in their quest to embarrass the
NPP administration and frustrate AVRL, continually
condemned the performance of the private company
and asked for a review of their contract even at a
time they were few months old in the country and
their performance could not easily be assessed.

Following a change of government in 2008, the
chief managers mobilized the Ghana Workers union
against AVRL with the aim of embarrassing the
company and putting the NPP in a bad light.

Having succeeded with their ‘agenda kick out
AVRL’, these same chief managers pressed for the
formation of the Ghana Urban Water Limited to take
over the management and operations of all the 81
Urban Water Systems in the country.

Interestingly, after the exit of the private
companies some funding which was allocated to the
company for the procurement of equipment were not
utilized, but management for reasons best known to
them left the monies untouched until the period
allotted expired and was returned to chest.

Meanwhile, few years down the line, government
explained that the company had to be merged with
GWCL “to eliminate waste, expand the supply of
safe water in urban areas and ensure that the poor
have access to water supply, while ensuring
sustainability through cost recovery and improved
sector management”

The company supervised the near-collapse of the
water sector in the country. Constant breakdown of
equipment regularly interrupted water supply to
various parts of the country. There were recorded
instances where chief engineers supervised the
procurement of wrong equipment which do not match
the company’s system and are left to rot in
warehouses since there is no use for them. This
situation, workers say, amounts to causing
financial loss to the state.

Few months after the merger, Communications
Manager of Ghana Water Company Limited, Stanley
Martey, confessed that the utility company had not
broken even in a very long time.

According to him, his outfit’s failure to break
even was what had accounted for its inability to
maintain a sustainable tariff regime and the
reason for the frequent increases in water
tariffs.

Under GUWL, residents in many parts of Accra and
Tema continually had to live with a water
rationing exercise undertaken by the company,
following periodic detection of structural defect
in the filters at the Weija Treatment Plant. The
company reportedly spent a whooping €950,000 on
the repair of faulty filters on the company’s
Weija Adam Clark Plant, after it spent some
€600,000 for similar repairs of other filtres in
March 2013. Concerns were raised at the rate at
which the filters breakdown and the amount of
money the company annually paid to a foreign
company, Messer’s Ballast Nedam to have them
repaired.

This paper can state categorically state that the
US$273million Kpong water treatment plant
expansion recently done to deliver about 40
million gallons of water per day to communities in
Adenta, Madina, Kwabenya, North and East Legon and
its environs is not living up to expectation as it
is unable to pump water to required homes because
of the unavailability of adequate distribution
lines.

The plant is producing half its capacity. It is
worthy to note that due to continuous variations
introduced in already signed internationally
funded contracts, most projects are left
uncompleted and this situation leaves huge
financial burdens on the company’s operational
funds.

Source - The New Statesman

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