Enoch Ofosu (MWRWH)
Emmanuel Addai (WSMP)
Ben Yaw Ampomah (WRC)
George Boakye Yiadom (CWSA)
Michael Agyemang (GWCL)
Rudolf Amenga Etego (Grassroots Africa)
Executive Summary
This is the first attempt in Ghana to produce a comprehensive Water and Sanitation Sector Performance Report. The production of this first edition, as is common with many a first attempt in many endeavours, has been quite challenging, while at the same time, it has helped to identify a couple of gaps that need to be filled as a sector to help speed up the drive toward sectorwide monitoring and subsequent reporting. As there are no harmonized sector indicators yet, this report is basically a compilation of reports from the three main sector agencies: Water Resources Commission, Community Water and Sanitation Agency and Ghana Water Company Limited. It must also be noted that the focus of this report is on local targets as set by the WRC, CWSA and GWCL and not the UN MDG targets. It is hoped that stakeholders will quickly come out with more ideas that will help shape subsequent Sector Performance Reports that will satisfy Ghana’s information needs on WASH.
Performance against national targets by 2015 (Drinking water supply)
The Ghana Water Company Limited, the main national utility in charge of supply of potable water to urban dwellers in Ghana, has set a target of achieving 85% coverage by 2015. As at the end of 2009, the company had achieved 59% coverage. The Community Water and Sanitation Agency has also set a target of 76% drinking water coverage for rural and small town dwellers by 2015. The Agency had achieved 58.97% as at the end of 2009. Based on this information, the overall national coverage as far as the two main sector agencies in charge of drinking water supply are concerned is estimated at 58.98% as at the end of 2009 as against a national target of 79.8%.
Performance in Water Resources Management
The main activities under water resources management in 2009 included: · Water quality monitoring: this has been carried out in 19 locations since 2005. Most of the river systems analyzed maintained their quality status while a few recorded some decline; Water resources use and regulation: As at the end of 2009, 154 major water users had been licensed and issued permits, majority of which were for domestic water supplies; Regulation of Dams: The WRC initiated a process of developing another regulation aimed at coordinating all relevant activities related to dam design, construction, operations, maintenance, and decommissioning to ensure uniform and adequate level of safety for all dams throughout Ghana; Compliance monitoring and enforcement: A register of permit holders (major water users) was regularly updated and annually made public in the print media; River basin management: Main activities included ensuring the functionality of River Basin Boards, development of national IWRM plans, IWRM promotion and public education and transboundary water resources management and development, as well as undertaking specific climate change adaptation projects.
Rural Water Supply and Sanitation
Rural and small town drinking water supply coverage has consistently improved from 40% in 2000 to 58.97% in 2009. However, with a sub-sector target of 76% by 2015, coverage should have been 60% as at 2009, meaning that the sub-sector is not yet fully on track. If the current coverage trend continues, the sub-sector will achieve about 74% by 2015.
Urban water supply
The national target set for urban drinking water supply under the GPRS is 85% coverage by 2015. Available data however shows that Ghana is far from meeting this target. The installed capacity of all the urban water supply systems in the country is about 949,000 cubic metres per day but current water demand in urban areas is estimated at about 1,101,032 cubic metres per day. Effective urban water supply coverage is about 59%. This coverage is quite low when compared with the targets.
Urban water coverage experienced a downward trend from 2003 to 2006. The trend however changed and since 2006 there has been a steady upward movement from 55% to 59% in 2009.
Since 2003, water production by GWCL has increased steadily from 205.2mm3 to 231.77mm3 in 2009. Revenue generation by the Company has also improved from GH¢41.5 million to GH¢106.6 million in 2009. However, cost of production has also increased from GH¢0.096/m3 to GH¢0.39/m3. Cost of chemicals per m3 for instance has doubled from GH¢0.02 in 2003 to GH¢0.04 in 2009. Non-revenue water as at the end of 2009 was 51.5%, having reduced from 57.1% in 2003.
GoG Budget performance
Since 2007, government allocations to the Water Resources Commission have consistently reduced from GH¢94,500 to GH¢60,845. It is also evident that actual releases from these allocations have been very low; 6.3% in 2007, 11.7% in 2008 and 3.2% in 2009. WRC spending from the GoG releases have always been 100%. Government releases to WRC over the three year period have been about 3% of WRC’s internally generated funds.
GoG allocations for rural and small town water supply has shown an upward trend from GH¢2,179,419 in 2006 to GH¢35,026,106 in 2009. However, the gap between allocations and actual releases is rather widening; from about 25% in 2006 to about 90% in 2009.
Since 2007, GoG has not been able to fully release its approved budget to GWCL. In 2007 for instance GoG released only 4.6% of the GH¢25.7 million approved, while in 2009, GoG released about 23% of the approved GH¢11.8 million.
Conclusions and recommendations
Monitoring and Evaluation
There is currently no sectorwide Monitoring and Evaluation framework. Information in this report has been based on fragmented sub-sector definitions and standards. Developing a sectorwide M&Eframework is therefore critical to the value of this report. For instance this report has no information on functionality and sustainability since an indicator on functionality or sustainability is not yet defined. There are no known sectorwide indicators on hygiene, gender and vulnerability issues among others. Lack of information on such critical components of WASH service delivery leaves a major gap in sector information and decision-making.
The Ghana Statistical Service (GSS) however generates substantial amount of data on WASH, including data on sanitation, hygiene and gender. However, stakeholders in the WASH sector have yet to make effective use of this survey data since they are yet to fully accept the methodologies and the definitions used. Experts have recommended a special WASH survey to be conducted (by the GSS) with common sector definitions and indicators in order to make more effective a common M&E framework.
Rural and small town water supply
Provision should be made for the investment component of CWSA to be rolled over every financial year to enable smooth implementation of programmes as happens with the funds provided by donors since it is not always possible for funds to be disbursed in one financial year.
Procurement
Though the Procurement Act has introduced a lot of transparency in the system it must be reviewed to introduce a higher degree of flexibility to properly align it to the development exigencies of current times to avoid unnecessary delays in implementation of projects.
Sanitation and hygiene indicators and data
To date, no WASH sector agency collates sectorwide data on sanitation and hygiene. Therefore this report has almost no data on sanitation and hygiene. The only type of data on sanitation is generated by the Ghana Statistical Service through representative household surveys and censuses. This report could not use that data for this report since the methodologies applied in generating such survey data are different from what the agencies applied to generate data on water.
NGO Contribution
In spite of their much appreciated contribution to policy formulation, decision-making, funding and facility delivery, it was extremely difficult to obtain a documented evidence of NGO contribution to the WASH sector in Ghana from the umbrella body (CONIWAS). It is strongly recommended that CONIWAS compiles an annual report on the total contribution its members make to the sector in the form of funding, facility delivery, advocacy and policy formulation, strategy development, sector learning among others.
Sustaining existing investments
More water and Sanitation investments are needed in both rural/small towns and urban areas
particularly in fast growing peri-urban areas. However, it is absolutely necessary to properly operate and maintain the systems and assure the sustainability of the investments. Unfortunately, however, it was hard to come by data on functionality for this report and it is strongly recommended that data generation by all the agencies should ensure that this all important indicator is not ignored.
GoG budget allocation and releases
Coverage for water and sanitation has been generally slow given the demand for improved drinking water and sanitation. A major contributory factor is government’s inability to release all approved funds to the sector over the years. There is a similar complaint from the GWCL and the WRC, and it is strongly recommended that the GoG should reverse the trend and ensure that adequate funds are released to help achieve the targets.
Water and Sanitation Development and other Boards
There have been major complaints from sector agencies and civil society of political interference in water management issues especially the dissolution of well established and trained water boards, agency Boards, CEOs and Managing Directors etc whenever there is a change in government. Long delays in replacing and training such Boards and Directors affect the overall performance of the WASH sector as they affect major decision-making such as release of funds and disbursement, recruitment of staff, award of contracts and collapse of installed systems.
Population estimates
Put together, estimates from the Ghana Water Company and the CWSA portrays Ghana’s population as at 2009 to be more than 27 million, while other reports such as those from the UN estimate it at about 23 million as at 2008. Population estimates alone can distort all statistical data and give a very wrong picture of what is supposed to be the actual situation. It will be in the interest of the WASH sector to work with a common population base.
Definition of urban and rural
Data disaggregation should base on common definitions of urban and rural. What happens at the moment is that some communities that are purely urban (according to the GSS definition of urban as a community with 5,000 or more inhabitants) are actually reported under rural or small town by CWSA because they fall under the CWSA operational areas as small towns. Therefore, while household user-based survey data on WASH disaggregate rural and urban according to the GSS definition, the agencies define the term according to the areas they operate (the GWCL for instance define urban as the communities served by the 82 systems they operate). It is therefore not possible to compare rural/urban disaggregated data from the agencies with those from the user survey reports from the GSS/JMP.
