Water supply to improve in 50 rural communities
Broken-down water systems in 50 communities are to be rehabilitated under a partnership between the Community Water and Sanitation Agency (CWSA) and the Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology (KNUST).
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Engineers of the Regional Water and Environmental Sanitation Centre of the KNUST will execute the GH¢12-million project to improve potable water supply to the beneficiary communities selected from all the 10 regions of the country.
The Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of CWSA, Mr Worlanyo Kwadjo Siabi, announced this in Kumasi yesterday at a risk assessment and management training programme as a precursor to the project.
The one-week training will enable the participants to draw on their professional backgrounds to map out and identify all possible risks about the project to ensure that it does not hit a snag.
Some of the risks to be assessed, the engineers anticipate, include whether the activities of illegal small-scale miners (galamsey) have affected the quality of ground water.
The KNUST is said to have a software for assessing the quality of ground water and measuring the effects of galamsey on it.
Water infections
Mr Siabi said the project would be piloted in five communities with an estimated population of 50,000 each.
As a result, he said, KNUST and CWSA were collaborating to train 46 experts from the agency to deal with risk assessment and management of the project in order not to be taken by surprise.
He said the CWSA had provided 30,000 boreholes and about 657 pipe systems, in line with its mandate of facilitating the provision of potable water systems in rural communities and small towns across the country.
Prof. Odai
A former Pro-Vice Chancellor of KNUST and Convener of the KNUST Centre, Prof. Samuel Nii Odai, challenged participants to use their knowledge to positively impact society.
He said the era of village folks walking long distances in search of potable water should be over with the depth of training and knowledge the participants had acquired.
Background
The World Bank, in May 2013, launched the African Centres of Excellence project, which aimed to establish academic centres of excellence in higher educational institutions across Africa.
The Regional Water and Environmental Sanitation Centre at the Department of Civil Engineering, KNUST, is one of the three centres of excellence established in Ghana with an $8-million loan facility from the World Bank.
The other two centres are at the University of Ghana, Legon.
Twenty-two centres were established across Africa.
The core mandate of the KNUST centre is to strengthen the human resource capacity of Ghana and the sub-region in areas related to water and environmental sanitation.
It offers doctoral and master’s programmes, specialised short courses for professionals, joint research and student and faculty exchanges with industry.