The Chairman of the Coalition of NGOs in Water and Sanitation (CONIWAS), Yaw Attah Arhin, has said that the government is yet to pay its members who supplied water to homes after the government announced the free water supply policy in the wake of the coronavirus pandemic.

He stated that his members played a key role in ensuring that the president’s programme achieved the desired results.

“If you are rich, the likelihood of you having access to safe water is also much higher and so we have always known that the challenges exist. So, when the president announced the free water policy, we were quite excited because we know that many people were going to have access through some other interventions.

“More than 90 per cent of our members provide safe water to communities without a charge because we’re a non-governmental organization and we’re not supposed to make profit. However, we have a few of our members who operate on the public-private partnership or a market-day solution approach and these are the ones who provide services and expect to receive something not even to make profit but to break even to be able to ensure that the facilities keep operating so that is the situation.”

He added that without payment they cannot maintain the facilities.

“Without receiving something for operation and maintenance, it’s going to be difficult for them to maintain this facilities in the first place that has been the challenge.”