Residents of the Teshie Telephone Pole area in Accra are appealing for urgent intervention to address a prolonged water shortage they say has disrupted their daily lives and placed a severe financial burden on households.

According to the residents, the water crisis has persisted for several months, with taps remaining dry for weeks at a time.

They say supplies from Ghana Water Limited are highly irregular, with water sometimes flowing only once a week and at such low pressure that many households are unable to fill their storage tanks.

Speaking to JoyNews’ Evelyn Ampah, one resident said the situation requires residents to wake up at odd hours to have any chance of collecting water.

“What they do is they open, I think, Wednesdays into Thursday, but then it’s not able to go into our tanks. So it means that if you sleep and are not able to wake up early to meet the time it’s opened, you wouldn’t have water,” the resident said.

The unreliable supply has forced many households to depend on alternative sources, including private water tankers. Residents, however, say the cost of buying water regularly is becoming increasingly difficult to bear.

“There’s no money to keep buying it. Water is life,” another resident said.

For some households, the shortage has affected even basic hygiene.

Another resident said the crisis had become so severe that some people had resorted to using seawater for bathing.

“The water crisis can be so severe that sometimes we do not even get water to bathe. We use detergent when we have to bathe with seawater because the bathing soap does not lather.”

A shoe seller in the area also said the shortage had affected his business, forcing him to reuse the same water to clean his shoes for nearly two months.

Residents say they have repeatedly appealed to the relevant authorities, including the area’s Member of Parliament, for assistance, but their concerns have yet to receive a lasting response.

They are therefore calling on Ghana Water Limited and other relevant authorities to urgently investigate the cause of the disruption and restore a reliable supply.

The residents say without immediate intervention, the prolonged shortage will continue to undermine basic sanitation, hygiene and livelihoods in the community.