Accra: Ghana Water Ltd. (GWL) has announced a need for approximately GH? 300 million to desilt major raw-water intakes across the country, excluding the Barekese Dam, which alone contains about six million cubic metres of silt. Mr. Adam Mutawakilu, the Managing Director of GWL, revealed at a press conference in Accra that the desilting exercise is urgently required to restore the company's water abstraction capacity and prevent supply disruptions during the dry season.
According to Ghana News Agency, Mr. Mutawakilu explained that the excessive siltation has severely affected the operational efficiency of several water treatment plants nationwide. This has led to frequent shutdowns, increased production costs, and declining output. He highlighted that the riverbeds have filled up with silt to a point where pumps are submerged or lying in sludge, making it impossible to draw water for treatment.
Mr. Mutawakilu identified several major intakes, including Owabi, Mampong, Kwanyako, and others, which are heavily silted. He noted that emergency dredging at the Owabi and Mampong treatment plants last year alone cost about GH? 64 million and GH? 13.8 million, respectively. Despite these interventions keeping abstraction channels open, the downtime reduced water supply to communities.
The Managing Director warned that without sustained desilting operations, Ghana could face acute water shortages as the dry season approaches. He stressed that the Barekese Dam, in particular, requires a separate large-scale intervention due to its scale, with silt removal estimated at GH? 150 per cubic metre.
Mr. Mutawakilu also pointed out that the increased silt load in raw water sources has driven up treatment costs, particularly in terms of chemical usage and energy. GWL has shifted from alum to imported polymers to treat the increasingly turbid water, raising chemical costs by about 400 per cent at some plants.
As a tariff-regulated utility, GWL cannot immediately pass these unexpected cost surges to consumers. Mr. Mutawakilu proposed a 24-month Catchment Recovery Plan focusing on eight priority rivers that feed GWL's treatment plants. The plan includes riverbank stabilisation, targeted dredging, and coordinated community engagement to protect river buffer zones.
He called on Corporate Ghana, development partners, and government agencies to support the desilting exercise financially and materially. Mr. Mutawakilu emphasised that GWL's expenditure is tied to approved tariffs by the Public Utilities Regulatory Commission (PURC), preventing the diversion of operational funds to dredging works.
Mr. Mutawakilu commended the government for ongoing efforts to protect water bodies from illegal mining and environmental degradation. He cited initiatives such as the Blue Water Guard surveillance operations and the National Anti-Illegal Mining Operations Secretariat (NAIMOS) as contributing to improvements in surface turbidity, while noting the continued struggle with choked riverbeds.
