It’s passed midnight and at the corner of the McCarthy Hill Street on the McCarthy Hill in Accra is this deep hole inside a drain surrounded by short tufts of grass. A rush of water from under the ground within the drain is adequately conspicuous. It’s a broken plastic pipeline and the water gushes out with such a suppressed force it creates a mini wave. Fresh treated water going waste.

At this rate of spillage, a gallon container can be filled in less than 10 seconds. That is, six gallons of treated water wasted in a minute, 360 gallons in an hour.

Take it another way. At least three 3000-gallon capacity tankers of water wasted in a day and for the three weeks of spillage, 60 tankers of treated water lost at a single point.

The irony, however, is that Ghana is still struggling to supply potable water to many of its citizens in the hinterlands.

In some rural communities, the search for water is a deadly adventure.

For example, in the remote Mion District of the Northern Region, residents have to climb several hills and walk over several kilometers to fetch water from the nearest stream.

A mother in Lijoblilbo, one of the villages in the district, is said to have died after falling off from the hill and crashing to the ground while returning from the stream with a pan of water balanced on her head.

The McCarthy Hill situation even triggers more anger as reaching the Weija office of the Ghana Water Company is just impossible. The line doesn’t work.

The Ghana Water Company instructs visitors to its website to call the telephone number 0302774707 for “enquiries and complaints…anywhere in Ghana.”

That too doesn’t work.

“It started long ago and we don’t know who to contact to fix the problem. It’s under a high tension pole and that can cause more problems,” one resident told JoyNews.

But this may be only one of the hundreds, if not thousands, of cases of water wastage going on right now across Ghana as others thirst or become ill for lack of water.

The GWCL already has a huge problem to grapple with. Up to GH¢12 million worth of water is lost annually through theft.

It’s announced plans to crack down on water theft the situation but little has been seen on that drive.

Water losses such as these ones at the McCarthy Hill only worsen an existing problem.

Public Relations Officer of the Ghana Water Company Stanley Martey has told JoyNews “burst lines unattended to within 24 hours will only happen on our blind side.”

“We fixed the problem on Monday after we received complaints from some residents,” he said.