The Minister for Water Resources, Works and Housing, Mr. Albert Abongo, has demanded a new work ethic from the staff of the Ghana Water Company Limited (GWCL) to make it profitable and a supportive arm of government's critical social development drive. He said the GWCL could not continue underperforming while the people expected it to be a meaningful participant in providing services that would support the country's industrial momentum as well as helping to improve their quality of life. Interacting with workers of the company in Kumasi as part of a two-day tour of some institutions under his ministry in the Ashanti and Brong Ahafo Regions on Thursday, Mr Abongo said it was not tenable for GWCL to continue with a run of poor services. "Basically, we (GWCL) should be able to break even," he said. However, he added, "our own inability to do the basic things we should be doing to manage our system is responsible for some of the problems we are facing". For instance, he said, the utility provider should have the "capacity to produce in excess". He observed that some bad habits such as the diversion of material resources of the company for private gain, among others, prevented the company from achieving desirable goals. He, therefore, asked the GWCL staff to be "serious" with their work and make a break with practices that previously rendered the company incapable of internally generating resources to refurbish its services. To overcome this problem, including the failure of GWCL to meet the demand for its services, Mr Abongo, who is also the Member of Parliament for Bongo, demanded a new work culture from the management and workers of the company in order to put it on a path for sustained growth and expansion. According to Mr. Abongo, water was critical for human survival as it underpinned many health related problems in the country. It was government's desire to provide potable water to all underserved communities in the foreseeable future, but that would to some extent depend on the capability of GWCL to overcome its challenges. These challenges, he said, included poor revenue collection, failure to maintain facilities and poor customer services such as delays in providing meters for new customers and lack of urgency in responding to queries. He said government intend to transform the company into a thriving one that would be able to generate sufficient resources to meet the cost of rehabilitation and expansion works. Mr. Abongo also made whistle stops at the Owabi Water Works and the adjoining Owabi village which is facing destruction, as a result of being sited downstream of the intake of the dam. Mr. Benito Owusu-Bio, Member of Parliament for Atwima Nwabiagya, who briefed the Minister at the Owabi village said unless government resettled the remaining 16 households still living in the village, their lives would be in danger. He said the village was to have been relocated when the dam was built in the 1920s, but this had not been carried out, in spite of several petitions over the years. He said anytime the river overflowed its banks, it inundated the village thus affecting all building structures in the community. Mr. Abongo said the government was aware of the situation and was making efforts to address it to bring respite to the affected families. The Minister was accompanied on the tour by Madam Wilson Anima, Deputy Ashanti Regional Minister. Source: GNA