Decentralising Water Supply And Management

-They Key To Sustainable Water Development In Africa.

The increase in population globally and its attendant increase of all human activities have brought myriads of problems unto the earth. One of the delicate ,sensitive and thorny issues is water .Water obviously is one of the only two most important and basic needs of life. The other is air. However air is produced, managed and supplied by the creator of the universe while supply and management of water since creation being left in the hands of inhabitants of the earth. Due to its obvious importance, utmost attention should have been given it but the situation in the world today is inverse. Currently, the world is facing acute water crisis simply because water has been and it’s still being mismanaged in almost all forms .One of the facets of water mismanagement is the destruction of water bodies , wetlands ,buffer zones throughout the world and particularly Africa. The rate of destruction of water bodies in the midst of water crisis is threatening and disheartening. It is a common sight to see in countries like Ghana, Togo ,Nigeria and other neighboring countries how streams and rivers that serve as sources of the product are being destroyed .Some of the most common forms of destruction are the filling of such super -important part of our lives for building purposes and the use of the water bodies as dumping sites. Many urban and rural communities have turn to use water bodies as dumping places for both solid and liquid waste. These do not only pollute the water but kills the bodies permanently .Studies about the water situation in the world today especially those of developing countries points to alarming proportion of deadly crisis staring in the face of the world. Statistics from the United Nations’ and the World Bank projects that about one billion [1-1.1 000 000 000] people throughout the world lack good portable drinking water leaving them at the mercy of contaminated sources of water. It is estimated that forty six percent [46percent] of Africans have access to good portable drinking water. Simple arithmetic shows that a whopping 56 percent of inhabitants of Africa live on contaminated water. A person dies every eight [8] seconds due to lack of clean water. This is because a larger population of Africans uses contaminated sources of water with disease vectors, pathogens or unacceptable levels of toxic or suspended solids .Water is essential to the survival of all living organisms. Scientists compute that the human body is made up of 70 percent water. Authoritative water research institutions further estimates that 14,000 people die as a result of consumption of poor and low quality water daily. While annual estimates peg the figure of deaths of water related diseases to 3,575 million people. It is also estimated that half of all hospital admissions throughout the world are due to water related ailments. Given this background startling information from water research giants, I can now proceed to make my case of calling for decentralization of water supply and management in Africa .This I strongly believe would ensure sustainable water supply and management [development]. Experience have shown that anything that has been decentralized work effectively in most cases to achieve its primary, secondary and tertiary objectives .This is simply because there is a sense of duty and ownership to protect and maintain that particular thing. In many African countries,(with Ghana as a case study),centralization of many areas of the governance system have failed massively. This is simply due to lack of ownership which leads to lack of duty and protection. However a good and positive experience could be learnt from the decentralization of the of the political administration. This has brought some amount of development in certain areas because power is in the hands of locals. But in the case of provision of utilities which is completely centralized, things are worse .It is therefore sensible to begin a process and procedure to promulgate statutes and legislatives in places where they are non-existent or enforce them in places where they exist to decentralize the management and supply of utilities and this case the important product to me is water .I am championing this campaign because not only does decentralization brings immense benefits; but the water crisis and its related negative consequences have huge toll on human existence and survival.

WHY THE NEED TO DECENTRALISE WATER MANAGEMENT.

This will ensure that local communities will participate in policy formulation and implementation to ensure water is well managed. There will also be no excuses or whatsoever to pollute water bodies as locals could enforce laws on water body protection. Transmission supply of water from long distances resulting in water losses as a result of leakages of transmission lines would be a thing of the past .Managers ,engineers as well as technicians will be employed by the community leadership hence there cannot be any chance to give unnecessary excuses or play blame games for non or poor performance.it shall also serve as source of employment and reduce corruption as accounting processes could easily be traced .Proceeds on revenue could directly be re-invested into water projects or any other by the locals. Illegal tapping of water will reduce drastically as monitoring and evaluation could easily be done .Deep contemplation I believe must be given to water related issues and be brought to the fore for independent deliberations to find solutions to these alarming revelations out of the various studies.

PRINCE OSEI TUTU A JOURNALIST e-mail, fadaot2007@yahoo.com.