Gov’t pumps US$750 million into water supply - Minister

The government has invested about US$750 million into the provision of safe water across the country, Mr. Felix Ofosu-Kwakye, Deputy Minister of Information and Media Relations, has announced.

This he said underlined the determination to achieve universal access to water.

It is projected that about 85 per cent of the urban population would enjoy adequate water supply by 2015, and that for rural communities about 76 percent.

Mr. Ofosu-Kwakye said this when he interacted with journalists in Kumasi during a working visit.

He said it remained focused on the job of making things better and spoke of various interventions to create jobs, improve the health, energy, education, agriculture and other sectors of the economy.

He also made reference to the enormous effort made to increase the police strength to fight crime and assure the people of security protection.

Currently, the police-public ratio stood at “1:724”, and he said this was inadequate and needed to improve.

Mr.Ofosu-Kwakye said the government had targeted to achieve the globally accepted ratio of 1:500 and that it was on the basis of this that over the last two years, about 1,000 four-wheel drive vehicles had been supplied to the police to enhance its operation.