Dr Kwaku Agyemang-Mensah, Minister of Water Resources, Works and Housing, has urged stakeholders to work towards making the SMARTer WASH project adopted by Metropolitan, Municipal and District Assemblies (MMDAs) for full-scale nationwide monitoring.

He said this would ensure the provision of real time data on the state of water facilities for the purposes of national development.

The SMARTer-WASH project, a cutting edge technology by the Community Water and Sanitation Agency (CWSA), which enables the Agency to get real time data on which of its pumps, mechanized boreholes, or water systems, is providing the desired services to the people of Ghana.

The technology involves the use of text messaging (SMS) by means of mobile telephones to report on the state of water facilities.

Speaking at a forum on the State of Rural Water Services in Ghana on the theme: ‘From Data to Impact: Leveraging Partnerships for Sustained Rural Water Services,’ in Accra on Wednesday, Dr Agyemang-Mensah said the country had made significant progress in terms of rural water delivery.

The SMARTer WASH Project is being implemented through a partnership with IRC, AKVO and Skyfox, with collaborative funding from the Government of Ghana, the Dutch Government, the World Bank, UNICEF, the Conrad N. Hilton Foundation and SNV.

The beneficiary regions include the Upper East, Upper West, Northern, Brong Ahafo, Western and Central.

Dr Agyemang-Mensah said the project had come to address the communication gap between policy makers, service providers, and beneficiary communities.

He said the technology would enhance data collection and analysis of the functionality level of service provided and management of rural water services.

He observed that the project was helping to establish the architecture for nationwide and long-term management WASH services in line with the vision and guidelines for monitoring in the rural water sub-sector.

He said this could also be useful for other initiatives in the water sub-sector, stating that “monitoring is essential in project delivery; it enables us to effectively manage and control project for the benefit of targeted communities”.

Dr Agyemang-Mensah noted that in the 1990s, rural water coverage was just 27 per cent, but today rural water coverage stands at 64 per cent.

He said this was shown in 27,555 borholes fitted with pumps, 636 pip schemes and 526 Ghana Water Company Limited rural connections; adding that this infrastructure constitute a huge asset base for government and beneficiary communities.

He said in spite of the huge amount of money already sank into the provision of rural water infrastructure, government and its partners would continue to further invest in the sub-sector.

“In this era of technological advancement, it is important that we apply modern tools to improve rural water services delivery.

“It should be possible for us as policy makers to have access to real time data policy decision making. We no longer have to wait for quarterly and annual reports to update sector data,” Dr Agyemang-Mensah stated.

He observed that real time data was required to ensure the functionality of water systems, scale up services and reduce water loss.

“On many occasions a simple breakdown of a water supply system can cause a community to be without potable water for days. This occurs when we are unable to bridge the gulf between the community and the service providers,” he said.

On results attained so far from the SMARTer WASH project, Mr Clement Bugase, the Chief Executive, CWSA, mentioned the establishment of a robust ICT infrastructure for mobile phone monitoring of water services in 131 districts out of the 216.

Others are the training of over 700 MMDA staff in the 131 districts on baseline data collection and management and generated statistical data and reports on the state of water services in each of the 131 districts.

The rest are operationalization of an SMS system by community members to alert private sector service providers on the need to fix their broken down water facilities and actually leverage the means to do it.

He gave the assurance that the project would be scaled up in the near future to cover the rest of the country.

Mr Tom Schouten, IRC Nertherlands Representative, lauded the project, and further urged governments and development partners to take a serious look at water and sanitation issues.