NGO wants to make clean water accessible

The Project Maji, a non-governmental organisation interested in providing sustainable and affordable potable water, aims to cover more than one million people in rural communities by 2025.

The move is necessitated by the current global statistics, which reveals that 2. 8 billion people have no access to basic sanitation and about one billion are without access to clean water.

Mr. Sunil Lalvani, the Founder and Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of the NGO, at the inauguration of a water plant at Adum Domenase in the Mpohor District of the Western Region, on Friday, said it was motivated to construct the facility because many rural dwellers were plagued with various diseases and ailments due to lack of access to quality drinking water.

In this vein, he said, the NGO headquartered in Dubai, in the United Arab Emirates, developed a solar-powered technology that could pump filtered water 100 metres below the surface of the earth.

Mr. Lalvani pointed out that access to sustainable water would ensure more healthier and prosperous lives for rural folks in Ghana and the rest of Africa.

“We intend to extend these services to Malawi, Angola, Uganda and other African countries in the coming years,” he said.

The NGO, he said, received a sponsorship package of US$50,000 from Shalina Healthcare, a pharmaceutical company based in Dubai, towards the construction of the water plant, which would supply 10,000 litres of clean water per day to over 5,000 people in the community.

So far, he said, it had constructed three other water facilities: an orphanage in the Greater Accra Region and for Atentun, near Assin Fosu and the Ando Clinic, near Cape Coast, both in the Central Region.

Mr. Samuel Yaw Edusie, a Deputy Minister of Water Resources, Works and Housing, stated that the Government had planned to ensure that all Ghanaian households had access to potable water by 2025.

In view of this, he said, the Government had started a strategic plan of providing safe and sustainable water to rural households in six regions: the Northern, Upper East, Brong Ahafo, Eastern, Western and Volta.

The 2014 water statistics show that 77 per cent of urban dwellers and 67 per cent rural settlers have access to potable water and expressed the hope to extend potable water to more Ghanaians in the next eight years.

The Deputy Minister warned individuals engaged in illegal small-scale mining in water bodies to desist from the practice before the law caught up with them.

The Country Director of Shalina Healthcare, Mr. Prashant Kumar Gaur, said the pharmaceutical company was committed to providing the Ghanaian population with access to essential medicines at affordable prices.

He said the company was delighted in funding the water facility for the community in line with its Corporate Social Responsibility.

The Chief of Adum Domenase, Nana Adisah II, expressed his appreciation to the NGO for making the water facility available in the town and appealed to the NGO to sell the water at an affordable rate so that the people could patronise it.

The GNA gathered that 20 litres, which is equivalent to a bucket of water, would be sold at 20 pesewas so that the NGO could maintain the facility when it breaks down.