Power rationing to affect water supply

The Ghana Water Company Limited (GWCL) says it will soon release a water rationing timetable as its operations begin to suffer as a result of the nationwide loadshedding exercise.
Michael Agyemang, the Head of Public Affairs at GWCL, said: “We are also affected a great deal by the loadshedding. Anytime there is a general outage, we also have our plants being affected because we don’t get power.”
He said its treatment plants are powered by the national grid and so are shut down immediately there is no power.
Mr Agyemang said last week, for instance, the Company had to shut down its treatment plants cumulatively for 27 hours – 10 hours on Day 1, nine hours on Day 2 and eight hours on Day 3.
“Our operations are such that sometimes when the power is shut down for just one hour, we lose all the water that we have in the system and then when the power comes back again it takes about not less than six hours to start pumping again.”
He said this also affects treatment plants dotted across the country.
The Company, as a result of the loadshedding, currently produces less than the 240 million gallons it is scheduled to produce for the country.
Credit: TV3