About one million people in under-served communities throughout the country are to benefit from potable water by 2017.
WaterHealth Ghana (WHG), a wholly-owned subsidiary of Water Health International (WHI), a private multinational company, is to establish 100 Waterhealth centres across the 10 regions of the country, its Chief Operating Officer, Mr Vikas Shah, has announced.
Currently, about five million people in seven regions have access to safe water due to the network of WHCs in Ghana.
Water health centres have pieces of water purification equipment that treats locally available water through a combination of sedimentation, pre-filtration and ultra-violet technology.
Each centre produces water to the standard of the World Health Organisation (WHO) and it is made available for a nominal usage fee on site or pumped to additional distribution points, depending on the size and density of the community.
During a tour of the facility at Dome in Accra, Mr Shah explained to journalists that WHI was a water micro-utility which delivered sustainable service involving the purification of local water resources to WHO quality drinking water standards.
The organisation, he said, worked through a public-private partnership (PPP) model to set up a water purification plant which could serve a community with a population ranging from 5,000 to 20,000 where the land, raw water source and electricity were provided by the community.
He explained that WHI raised funds to procure and install the water purification plants, based on a build, operate and transfer (BOT) agreement signed with the local assembly and the traditional authorities.
Mr Shah added that WHG and the communities reached a concession term which ranged from 20 to 50 years.
The Dome water purification plant produces 60,000 litres of water per day and has the capacity to do 27,000 litres per hour. Twenty litres of water is sold at GHC1.00.
The facility, which was constructed in August, last year served about 5,000 residents of the Ga East municipality.
According to Ms Akua Ansah, a resident of the community, the facility had contributed immensely to the reduction in water-borne diseases and also increased school attendance.
She added that it had also served as a means of employment for residents of the community, since some had been employed to operate the facility.
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