Tough water privatization war ahead

The National Coalition Against Privatisation of Water (NCAP) has yet signalled that the government is in for a big fight this year on water privatization. A meeting to re-think through the resistance strategy held on February 6 and attended by over 40 representatives from the various labour unions, NGOs, student and women groups, debt relief campaigners and religious organizations.

The Coalition’s reorganization comes in the wake of government’s entrenched position on the choice of multinational involvement, public protest notwithstanding, as the only viable means of bringing water to the homes of millions who are without it today.

At the National People’s Assembly held in January at the Accra International Conference Centre, the President, John Kufuor told the country that the government will go ahead with the programme. As part of the Coalition’s preparations for this battle, it has re-engineered its National Coordinating Committee to map out a more effective strategy to engage the government in what appears to be the NPP’s biggest encounter with civil society since January 7, 2001.

According to the Coalition, water is a public good and not a commodity like milk and rice as the government seeks to achieve. Back last year, the Coalition including Integrated Social Development Centre (ISODEC) launched a fierce campaign against commodifying water.

The Water Sector Restructuring Secretariat (WSRS) and Kwamena Bartels, then Minister of Works and Housing labelled the campaign and the Coalition’s position as merely “ideological” and “unpatriotic”. The forum led by National Coordinator of the Coalition, Rudolph Amenga-Etego, agreed with the government on the gravity of the problems confronting the water sector in Ghana and on the need for an urgent remedy, but disagreed on the choice of privatization as the only way out of the quagmire.

Kwasi Adu Amankwah, Secretary General of the Trades Union Congress in an address lamented over government’s misinterpretation of the Coalition’s position as merely “ideological” and “unpatriotic.” In the sense that the Coalition was up against attempts to improve water production and delivery in the country.

On internal matters, Amankwah expressed the need to shape up the Coalition’s communication strategy in a way that sends out a clearer message. The Southern Sector Coordinator of the Coalition, Gyekye Tano said it is inappropriate for public institutions to suppress dissenting views on the policy. He explained that, “The Coalition must seize the opportunity to change the misnomer of regarding expenditure on public goods such as water, health, electricity and education as a cost that must be shifted to the taxpayer through the International Monetary Fund and World Bank imposed conditionality of full cost recovery in these sectors.”

Tanoh explained that expenditure on public goods constitute an investment that can yield dividends in the form of a healthier and more productive population.

Restating its position on the water privatization process, the Coalition denounced what it described as the “narrowing of discussions on water sector restructuring to cover only privatization, the fast-tracking of the process, the arm-twisting tactics of the World Bank, IMF, the British government and other multi-laterals, bilateral donors and the lease arrangement itself,” which it described as a “financially bad arrangement,” designed to short-change the Ghanaians.

Presently, the multinational water companies are waiting on the sidelines to grab lucrative projects. They are said to be awaiting proposed increases in utility rates to “economic levels” to avoid public wrath as experienced by some of these companies in countries such as Bolivia and South Africa.