Water Ministry To Clamp Down On Illegal Water Connections

The minister of Water Resources and Sanitation , Madam Cecilia Abena Dapaah has announced that her ministry will soon embark on house to house exercise to check residents who have illegally connected pipes into their homes to siphon pipe water at the blind side of her ministry free of no charge.

Speaking at her turn to brief the news men on happenings at her ministry , she disclosed that a team of inspectors from her outfit upon tip off busted a resident of East Legon who has unlawfully tapped water from the main pipeline into his house for commercial gains. This man turned round to sell back the stolen water to his victims. According to the minister, this man used two big PVC pipes to draw the water from the mains depriving other users in the area of water. According to her , this is untenable and he has been apprehended and being prosecuted by the police.

Meanwhile all the years he made those illegal connections are going to be calculated with interest for him to pay all. “We know that so many people have made a lot of illegal connections as in homes, establishments and farms over the years and we are going to wage a relentless war on them. We are not going to announce the day of our movement and it would be sustained until all the perpetrators are unearthed and brought face to face with the law ,” she submitted. The honourable minister gave a litany of many water and sanitation projects the government has embarked on. She said because of water for all project, all the 16 regions will benefit from regional water supply scheme. She gave figures and pictures of ongoing water projects in terms of new ones, rehabilitating ones, expanding ones ,etc. She said this government has spent over 700 million dollars on water treatment, development and rehabilitation since 2017 which is unprecedented in the country’s history.

Madam Abena Dapaah said Ghana had over 52 billion cubic metric tons of water but currently she is using only 14 % that needs to be corrected to get more water. “Our greatest problem is the work of illegal miners that are destroying our water bodies. Rivers like Ankobra, Offin, Pra, Birim, Tano and others have been destroyed or diverted by these miners and if we we don’t double our fight against them ,we shall lose all our water bodies. For if the source of our water is being destroyed, then we are in deep trouble “, she lamented.

She enumerated the various challenges and difficulties the sector has been going through over the years . Some of which has to do with obsolete equipment, illegal connections, old meters, sand and stone winning, illegal miners, funding, old and coloured pipes, encroachment , etc.

She called all citizens to stop some to stop these nefarious activities by these recalcitrant miners. She assured the nation that the government under Nana Akufo Addo is doing everything to provide water for Ghanaians no matter the cost.