GWCL Risks Shutting Down If Something Is Not Done About Tariffs – Communications Manager

The Ghana Water Company Limited (GWCL) says should the general public refuse to support the company’s drive to get all customers to pay realistic tariffs it may have to also halt operations in the future and according to the communications Manager, Stanley Martey, the company can no longer continue to struggle to stay afloat using

the meagre revenue it generates, thus the need for higher tariffs. He then stated that the inability of the company to also generate enough revenue from the low tariffs it charges has also largely contributed to inefficiencies it experiences at the moment despite the several internal interventions to increase revenue generations.He stated

that the situation has also contributed to the inability of the GWCL to provide 100% coverage to the Ghanaian population. Even we ourselves as an institution would have wished that we had 100% access, but unfortunately we haven’t been able to. And one of the reasons is that since the inception of PURC, or since I joined Ghana

Water 20 years ago, I don’t remember any time that we’ve had full cost-recovery tariffs. So every time you present cost of production at a certain figure you’re given less than 50 or less than 30% of what you requested for. So there’s always been a backlog, and how can we also be efficient when these things are happening? Seriously, if it

hadn’t been for the prudent management of the GWCL, I don’t know what it would have become by now, he said. Stanley Martey also noted that some internal interventions had helped boost revenue generation; however, more is also needed to be done, particularly in relation to the tariffs in order for the company to function

optimally as it ought to. As I speak, there are a lot of projects that we have done with the little revenue that we generate, and that is how come we’re able to stay afloat. So for instance, we by ourselves introduced and established internal performance improvement programmes where we gave ourselves targets, we

signed contracts from the Ministry through the Board, to management and it cascaded down to the lowest staff where everybody had a target that they needed to meet that target and then be rewarded, ok, and that has also changed our lives as a company. And so for instance around 2014, 2015 we were also collecting around 14-

15million Ghana cedis monthly now we’re collecting close to ¢90 million. So we’re able to do a lot of things, he said.Meanwhile, he revealed that the last time the GWCL managed to secure an upward adjustment in tariffs was in 2018.