Ghana Water Limited (GWL) has billed 685 customers in the Greater Accra Region a total of GH¢18.5 million for water consumed through illegal connections.
The company has so far recovered GH¢6.5 million, leaving about GH¢12 million outstanding.
The Managing Director of GWL, Mr Adam Mutawakilu, said the company was pursuing the outstanding amount while stepping up measures to curb water theft and recover revenue owed to the utility.
He said GWL had established a National Revenue Enhancement Team to identify illegal connections and recover unpaid revenue.
Mr Mutawakilu disclosed this on Joy FM’s Super Morning Show on Wednesday, September 2, 2026, during a discussion on Ghana’s water supply, access and quality.
He said the team, established in August 2025, was working with national security agencies to identify illegal connections and recover money owed to GWL.
According to Mr Mutawakilu, the exercise in the Greater Accra Region had so far led to the identification of the 685 illegal connections and the billing of the affected customers.
He said the company recovered about GH¢450,000 in August alone from customers identified through the exercise.
The latest figures show an increase in the number of illegal connections previously reported by the company.
In May 2026, GWL said it had identified nearly 400 illegal connections in Accra and recovered about GH¢3.7 million from customers who had illegally connected to the water supply network.
Remote monitoring
Mr Mutawakilu said GWL was also turning to technology to make water theft more difficult and improve the accuracy of consumption records.
He said the company was working to activate the remote-reading capability of its smart meters and expected the system to be operational by December 2026.
The Managing Director said GWL had been using smart meters since 2017, but their remote-reading capability had not been fully activated.
He said the company was putting the necessary infrastructure and training in place to allow the meters to be read remotely.
The move follows a customer-classification exercise which found that more than 6,000 commercial customers in Accra, including washing bays, hotels and restaurants, were still being billed based on estimated consumption.
Mr Mutawakilu said GWL was working to move such customers to actual metering because commercial customers account for a large share of the company’s revenue.
He said the company was also introducing artificial intelligence into its monitoring systems to help identify irregularities and possible illegal connections.
“We believe that by December this year, in terms of theft, we should be able to reduce illegal connections and read them remotely,” he said.
GWL is also installing flow meters and establishing District Metered Areas to improve its ability to track water entering and leaving different parts of the distribution network.
Mr Mutawakilu said the company’s telemetry system, which is currently operational in some districts, was expected to become fully functional by December.
Water losses
The measures to recover revenue come as GWL continues to deal with high levels of water losses.
Mr Mutawakilu said the company currently produced about 219 million gallons of water a day, against national demand of approximately 350 million gallons.
Non-revenue water stood at 47.6 per cent in June 2026, down from 52.2 per cent in December 2024 and 51.6 per cent in December 2025.
Non-revenue water refers to water produced by the utility but not generating revenue because of illegal consumption, leakages, faulty meters and billing problems.
Mr Mutawakilu said the reduction in the non-revenue water rate reflected efforts to address physical losses and illegal consumption.
The 47.6 per cent figure is still above the 45 per cent benchmark set by the Public Utilities Regulatory Commission (PURC) under the current Multi-Year Tariff Order.
The PURC Executive Secretary, Dr Shafic Suleman, said GWL could receive an additional revenue incentive if it reduced the rate below 40 per cent.
The latest figures on illegal connections underline the revenue losses facing GWL as the company seeks to recover money from unauthorised water use and improve monitoring and billing.
