Water Crises Looms Weija In Danger ...No Spare Parts To Fix Broken Pumps

Intensive investigations undertaken by the New Crusading GUIDE has revealed that Ghana water Company Limited�s Weija treatment plant that supplies water to most parts of Accra faces an imminent shutdown as checks by this paper indicate that the whole system is on the brink of a collapse. The situation has arisen as a result of GWCL management�s flagrant refusal to procure spare parts for the company�s obsolete equipment used to pump water to the western, eastern and central parts of Accra. Although a lot of noise was made recently for the replacement of these spare parts following media reports on the state of equipment at Weija, the company ignored all calls to do needed but still relies on Kokompe for repairs and elctro-fitting of damaged parts, a practice experts say costs the company more money than even replacing the spare parts to keep the plant running. Readers would recall that last year residents in many parts of Accra and Tema had to live with a water rationing exercise that was undertaken by the then Ghana Urban Water Limited (GUWL) for months. The exercise, according to the service provider, became necessary following the detection of a structural defect on four out of the 12 filters at Weija. The breakdown of the filters resulted in a shortfall of 20% of water production, representing 10 million gallons of water daily. Currently the situation is even worse as the company is being compelled to cut down production by 30% because the weija plant�s old intake pump is not working to its full capacity because of lack of spare parts to replace damaged ones. Our checks also indicate that only two out of the three pumps are working and without a standby in an emergency situation. To make matters worse the company�s engineers are relying on a manual approach which may take forever, to detect a fault on the control panel of one of the pumps because the company does not have a simple diagnosis device which concerns itself with monitoring the system, identifying when a fault has occurred, and pinpointing the type of fault and its location. When Weija was flooded recently, there were recommendations for the acquisition of a diagnosis machine for the early detection of faults but the call was dumped into the dustbin of history when the problem was taken care of. �Bamark plant will go down anytime soon, because management has refused to purchase spare parts for the airblower and backwash pumps and this situation has persisted since 2011. The pumps are about 15 years old and they operate on a daily basis. We are faced with a very critical situation because spare parts from the standby pumps have been used to fix the duty pump which is in operation.� A worried worker told this reporter at Weija. Instead of directly contacting manufacturers of pumps for faulty parts, the company mischievously preoccupies itself with the placements of newspaper announcements, inviting interested parties to put in bids for the procurement of proprietary items. It is rather quite interesting to note that three years or more after these adverts are placed in the newspapers, no company is selected by GWCL to supply the needed spare parts to keep the pump running. Meanwhile the company has admitted in several reports that �some of our production facilities are prone to breakdown due to old age�