Professor Kwabena Frimpong Boateng, Chairman of Public Utility Regulatory Commission (PURC) on Friday stressed the need for Government to come out with a policy directive on rainwater harvesting. He said God had blessed Ghana with a lot of water that could be harvested and stored for use during the dry season and expressed concern about the failure of experts to advice Government on possibilities and potentials in water harvesting instead of leaving the rain water to go untapped every year. Professor Frimpong Boateng made the call when he led some members of the Commission to inspect facilities of Ghana Water Company Limited (GWCL) in Upper East Region at Bolgatanga. Some other water pumping sites visited by the team included Vea and Navrongo projects. It was to assess the situation and develop measures to solve challenges confronting the sector. He said Ghana would not be justified if she complained about water shortage when indeed there were alternatives and indicated that rainwater when harvested could be treated as a source of drinking water to avoid shortage of water that usually hit some parts of the country. Professor Frimpong Boateng said harvested water could also be used for other purposes including irrigation farming especially in the Northern parts of the country where it rained once in a year. “Water to me is the first food item on earth and all plans need to be marshaled to ensure that it is adequately provided for the people,” he stressed. Professor Frimpong Boateng said floods when they occurred usually caused destruction to properties and brought untold hardships to its victims adding that these could be avoided if rainwater was effectively harvested and stored. He commended management of the company for working under hard conditions and urged them to endeavour to improve on the water situation in the Region. Giving the water situation in Upper East Region, Mr George Yaanore, Acting Upper East Regional Chief Manager of GWCL said it operated three systems in Bolgatanga, Bawku and Navrongo. He said the rest were small water systems which were community based and transferred to the assemblies and being managed by the Community Water and Sanitation Agency. Mr Yaanore explained that the Bolgatanga water system had a treatment plant at Vea near Bolgatanga designed to contain 1,600,000 gallons. “However, the system provides a daily average of 880,000 gallons whereas the estimated daily demand is 1,288,000 gallons,” he said. The water supply to Navrongo and Bawku are mechanized boreholes. The designed capacity of the Navrongo system is 330,000 gallons. It supplies a daily average of 167,000 gallons out of an estimated demand of 640,000 gallons per day. Mr Yaanore said the designed capacity of Bawku was 440,000, with a daily average supply of 178,000 gallons. It has an estimated demand of 1,134,000 gallons. He mentioned some of the constraints militating against their operations as obsolete equipment, saying since the water pumps were fixed in 1970 they had never had any major repairs and that was affecting the production of water in the Region. Another problem was the limited distribution network with only 4,700 connections in Bolgatanga and its environs as well as the silting of Vea dam which was the main source of water for the company. “Frequent power outages, reduction in the groundwater levels of the well fields at Bawku and Navrongo, and conflicts in Bawku that led to the destruction of most of the mechanized pumps is a major problem,” he added. However, Mr Yaanore explained that the Bolgatanga water system expansion was being considered under the subsequent Year Investment Programme on Urban Water Project to be funded by the World Bank to meet the water supply needs of the Municipality in 2025. He said in the interim, the company was using its internally generated funds to rehabilitate the Vea head works pumps, renew the 300 mm main transmission from Vea to Bolgatanga and the distribution of networks to un-served areas. Source: GNA