Consumers in the Central Region owe the Ghana Water Company Limited (GWCL) to the tune of GH¢57,555,428.00 with Government debt amounting to more than GH¢41.2M.

The government debt constitutes the cost of water consumed by various government agencies including the Metropolitan, Municipal and District Assemblies (MMDAs) and second cycle and tertiary institutions in the Region.

Mr John Eric Kwofie, Central Regional Production Manager of GWCL who disclosed this at the celebration of this year’s World Water Day in the Central Region, said private companies and individuals debt to the Company also stood at GH¢16,354,034.

World Water Day was instituted by the United Nations (UN) at a summit on Environment and Development in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil in 1992 to draw world leaders’ attention to the need to protect water bodies.

The theme for this year’s celebration was: “Water and waste water.” It was attended by students from senior and junior high schools within the Mfantseman Municipality as well as the public.

Mr Kwofie pointed out that the Company spent a lot of money to bring potable water to consumers and as such every consumer should endeavour to pay his or her water bill promptly.

He said the GWCL had adopted the use of electronic billing to ensure prompt delivery of bills to customers and that customers could pay their bills through their mobile phones.

Mr Kwofie called on the Government and other stakeholders to take stringent and timely measures to halt the activities of illegal mining (galamsey), which continued to deplete raw water resources across the country. According to him, illegal mining was having critical impact on operational cost due to increased turbidity levels, as well as the quality of water supply in the country.

“Overall operational cost for the Region keeps increasing due to rising repair and maintenance of our raw water pumps mainly due to these “galamsey” activities.

Mr Kwofie urged the Water Resources Commission to speed up work on the implementation of the buffer zone policy, while activities of the National Task Force should be strengthened to deal with the issue. He noted that though water was fundamentally important to human survival, more than 80 per cent of waste water generated in the society was released back to the ecosystem without being reused.

Mr Kwofie said waste water did not only harm and polluted the environment but presented health hazard to billions of people around the world and therefore called for effective waste water management to improve lives and the environment.

He assured consumers and the public that GWCL would continue to collaborate with the relevant stakeholders to manage the existing raw water resources of the Region to provide potable water at all times.