The Director of Communications for the Ghana Water Company Limited (GWCL), Stanley Martey, has indicated that the proposed increment in water tariffs is because the time is due for it to be reviewed.
According to Stanley Martey, every four years, there is a major tariff review program for all the utilities and the time is due for the water company to undertake such review. “So, that’s exactly what we are doing.”
Mr. Martey indicated that PURC will assess all the parameters within the tariff calculation formula and then come out with an adjustment or will review what actually pertains with regards the proposals submitted. With that, he averred that the tariff will either go down, may remain the same or may go up.
“You also will bear with me that times have changed so we need that proposal so that at least in times it has to go down, it goes down for everybody to benefit and if it has to go up, it will also go up for everybody to benefit. So, we have submitted this proposal based on the request from the PURC and then because it is a major tariff review season.”
Stanley Martey
Touching on how the GWCL will retrieve debts owed causing losses before an increase in the tariffs, Mr. Martey revealed that his outfit has been leveraging on technology and deploying a lot of mechanisms to enable the water company reduce the losses.
“In every water industry globally, there is an acceptable loss which is between 20 and 25 percent. But ours now goes beyond 25 percent and in 2017, it was around 54 percent. As I speak, we are between 40 and 45 percent. We are still working hard to ensure that we reduce it further and with our vision of becoming a world class utility, we can also fall within the range of 20 to 25.”
Stanley Martey
GWCL needs to invest more
Stanley Martey stated that the GWCL needs to invest more and currently, his outfit is investing into new meters, bulk and even domestic meters. He posited that most customers will confirm that there has been a change in the old meters to new smart digital meters that will read accurately and will enable GWCL measure the water used.
“When we are able to meter all our treatment sites and then we come out with our district metering areas, we will know every district and know the volumes of water that goes into the district. This is what we are working on now and we are sure that we should be able to account for every little volume of water that comes to the system. There is a lot of investment as I speak.”
Stanley Martey
Stanley Martey further revealed that GWCL has invested into telemetry and is investing into changing most of its old and weak pipelines. He added that GWCL is extending distribution lines to more communities so more people can have access to water. “We need the support of everybody to help us sail through.”
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