Committee inspects water treatment facilities in Ashanti Region

The Parliamentary Select Committee on Works and Housing, has inspected water treatment plants in the Ashanti Region, and called for good maintenance culture for their sustainability.

They included a groundwater system at Tepa, the Barekese and Owabi Dams, Effiduase-Asokore borehole treatment plant, Agona water supply borehole station, Seniagya borehole water supply system and the Asante-Mampong water treatment plant.

The Committee, accompanied by Officials of Ghana Water Company Limited (GWCL), is in the Region to ascertain the state of the water supply system and identify challenges for redress.

This is to help provide uninterrupted supply of potable water to the citizenry.

Mr. Joseph Nana Amoako, Chairman for the Committee, speaking to the media at Asante-Mampong, indicated that water was a necessity of life, a reason for which the country ought to protect the supply system at all times.

He said the Committee through its inspection had identified that there were not many challenges with the surface water and borehole treatment systems.

The only pertinent issue, he noted, related to the Owabi Dam, where the water body had been engulfed in filth, especially the presence of plastic waste on the surface.

He asked the GWCL to act expeditiously in dealing with this situation since plastic waste had the potential to pollute the water body.

Nana Amoako, who is the Member of Parliament (MP) for Upper Denkyira-East, tasked the GWCL to strive to engage all stakeholders, especially traditional authorities to settle issues bothering on encroachment.

He drew attention to the fact that the world was experiencing changing climatic conditions, leading to the shrinking of most vital water bodies which served the needs of mankind.

The nation must, therefore, take seriously the issue of encroachment since it was a threat to the sustenance of the water supply system.

The GWCL, according to the Committee, must act decisively to protect all its buffer zones, because, the continuous human activities within the catchment areas of the water supply systems was not the best.

Nana Amoako assured that they would engage the government to help curb further encroachment and bring sanity to the system.

Mr. Opare Afum, Station Manager at the Asante-Mampong Water Treatment Plant, in an interview with the Ghana News Agency (GNA), pleaded that works on the road and bridge leading to the site must be completed as quickly as possible.

“In times of rainfall, it becomes too difficult to use the road. Sometimes, we will have to wait till the rains subsided, especially, on the bridge before commuters could make any movement,” he stated.

According to the Station Manager, currently, they produce approximately 4,500 meter cube of water to serve over 40,000 people within the Asante-Mampong Municipality and Sekyere Central District.