Ghana water breaks new grounds
Ghana’s sole urban water provider started as the Ghana Water and Sewerage Corporation (GWSC) and has evolved over the years into what is today known as the Ghana Water Company Limited (GWCL).
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The company currently operates 86 water systems throughout the country, with an average production of 192 million gallons per day, while the average demand stands at 250 million gallons per day.
It has 15 regional offices, five operational units and 75 district offices.
In 1999, the GWSC was converted into a wholly state-owned limited liability with responsibility for urban water supply only.
Resolving challenges and the turn around
In 2015, the management of the company realised that there were a host of operational and managerial challenges that continued to hamper its performance. Its financial position was very weak due to low revenue collection and mounting arrears.
In a bid to revamp its operations, therefore, the management decided to formulate, adopt and implement a 100-day transformational programme called the High Impact Performance Improvement Programme (HIPIP) to address the weaknesses and turn the company around.
The programme was anchored on performance improvement within the short term as a transformational plan and establishing the foundation for sustainable future service delivery.
The programme also addressed the need for changes to staff culture as necessary conditions for change management.
The broad objectives of the 100-day programme included turning around the performance of the GWCL to improve service delivery to customers; introducing a competition-driven, target setting framework for steering performance improvement in the GWCL and enhancing the internally delegated management framework for areas aimed at transferring operational responsibilities to regions and districts to drive performance.
The programme was also to provide an incentive framework as the prime reward for performance improvement and penalty mechanisms for failure.
The ultimate goal, however, is to turn the GWCL into a profitable utility company in 100 days, while meeting the aspirations of customers.
The approach
The company partnered the World Bank and contracted a Uganda-based firm, 2ML Consulting, to guide the process.
To start with, all key positions such as regional chief managers and district managers were declared vacant and advertised for internally. Shortlisted applicants were asked to prepare detailed business plans and later interviewed. All head office chief managers were also made to prepare business plans.
During the interview, targets (SMART & STRETCH) on key performance indicators were agreed upon.
The process culminated in the signing of memoranda of understanding by all successful applicants with the company, and between the board of directors and the Ministry of Water Resources, Works and Housing. The board, in turn, signed an MoU with the managing director.
The managing director also signed an MoU with all the departmental heads at the head office and the various regional chief managers. The regional chief managers in turn signed MoUs with their respective district managers.
Implementation
Implementation of the 100-day programme started on April 1, 2015 and ended on June 30, 2015. In a presentation to launch the programme, the Managing Director, Mr Frederick Christian Lokko, stressed the need to ensure financial sustainability, customer satisfaction and judicious use of resources.
In order to ensure that all parties stayed on course, an effective monitoring and evaluation mechanism was put in place. To this end, there was the selection of a reform leader called the Champion at the Head Office.
A seven-member Reform Implementation Committee was also set up at the Head Office to monitor the activities of the committees put in place.
The results
The programme has so far boosted staff morale, led to a remarkable improvement in revenue generation and changed the work culture of staff entirely.
From a baseline monthly revenue collection of GH¢17 million, the first month of April 2015 recorded a monthly collection of GH¢25 million, a 47 per cent increase. Collection for May was also GH¢25 million, with June recording GH¢23 million.
The obvious effect of this significant rise in collection is a fall in arrears. Currently, billing is going up, while the number of unbilled customers is drastically reducing.
This could be attributed to the reward and penalty mechanism for performance improvement and failure, respectively, which the programme provided.
Departments and regions/districts which achieved their set targets were handsomely rewarded.
Evaluation & awards
As part of the programme, there is a periodic evaluation session at which the performance of each region, district and department is assessed based on the agreed targets and rewarded or penalised as the case may be.
During these evaluation workshops, trophies are awarded to best performing regions, districts or departments in the various thematic areas. The overall best region is also determined and rewarded handsomely.
Keen competition
The desire to excel and receive an award at every evaluation has engendered healthy competition and rivalry. All the regions are, on a daily basis, developing very innovative schemes to reach out to customers.
These innovations range from electronic billboards advertising the services of the regions to branded T-shirts and baseball caps. Others deploy what they call “mobile man” where operational staff are given motorbikes with all the necessary tools and go round identifying leakages and bursts and fixing them.
If the burst is such that it requires greater attention, the “mobile man” stops the leak and reports back to base. This has cut short response time.
Another region has adopted the concept of “Water Ambassadors”. These are community members who are carefully identified by the region to serve as representatives of the company in their localities, reporting all leaks and bursts and directing people to pay points among other roles.
Attitudinal change
The programme has greatly improved punctuality at work as some of the regions have installed clocking devices to check lateness and absenteeism. There is industrial harmony with all staff sharing ideas on the best way to do one thing or the other.
Team work is at its best due to the understanding that once good performance is achieved the benefits will be enjoyed by all.
Sustained high performance
Upon successful completion of the 100-day programme at the end of June 2015, the company embarked on a successor programme called “SUSTAINING HIGH PERFORMANCE IN 180 DAYS” or SHiP 180 for short.
Started in August 2015, SHiP 180O ended in January 2016. At the last evaluation meeting held in February 2016 in Accra, revenue collection for the last six months had risen quite significantly.
On the basis of these sterling performances, a nine-month programme dubbed “PUSH UP” was launched on April 1, 2016.
With this, the managing director has impressed on staff to aim at collecting all that they bill for the month in addition to five per cent arrears.
The writer is the Communications Manager at the Ghana Water Company Ltd.
He can be reached at [email protected].