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Before the Akufo-Addo-led NPP government took over the administration of the country, Ghana was losing a whopping sum of of $1.5 million every month as a result of the bogus contract entered into between the previous Mahama government and Befesa Desalination Development Ghana for the construction and operation of the Teshie-Nungua Desalination Plant.

Before the Akufo-Addo-led NPP government took over the administration of the country, Ghana was losing a whopping sum of of $1.5 million every month as a result of the bogus contract entered into between the previous Mahama government and Befesa Desalination Development Ghana for the construction and operation of the Teshie-Nungua Desalination Plant.

Befesa Ghana Limited was contracted by the Mahama government to build the desalination plant, operate it to defray its cost and hand over to the GWCL after 25years.

An example of data analysis on the water supply and payments shows that operators of the plant, whose construction was completed in February 2015 at a cost of $126 million, for a period of nine months, supplied an average of 650,000m3 of water per month to the GWCL.

The Daily Statesman can state on authority that the financial obligation to the GWCL for the supply was $1.5 million per month, in addition to $300,000.00 paid to the Electricity Company of Ghana for power supply.

Strangely, however, the water company got less than $300,000.00 from the sale of the water every month, indicating that the Mahama government was committing the nation to losses of a whopping $1.5 million every month.

Rip-off

The available facts now appear to confirm the fact that the Teshie Desalination Plant project intended to produce water by way of reducing saltwater to domestic and industrial consumption was a total rip-off by agents of the erstwhile Mahama administration.

Engineers say the "head" or elevation of the plant is not high enough to push the water by gravity to enable it reach more people and generate more revenue.

They also see the location of the plant at Teshie to be problematic because residents there are poor, and it will therefore be unreasonable or unacceptable to charge them more than everyone else.

“Patronage is also low because of the aesthetics: the ‘yuk factor’.....this is where the residents poo and dump rubbish,” one engineer told the Daily Statesman.

According to the engineers, it would have been better to have located the plant at Tema for the water to be used as raw material for industries.

“That would limit customers to a few key industries; and it would make for easier, more efficient revenue collection. Ghana Water Company could then charge higher/ more commercial rates per unit,” one engineer explained.

Alternatively, the engineers believe the best option would have been to bring the water from Ada or Sogakope, where there is too much fresh water to require desalination.

“If the decision makers were really thinking, we could have built a pipeline from the Volta Lake (largest freshwater lake in Africa) for $40 million and gotten the same effect. Or the Ada one would have been cheaper,” one of them explained further.

$7m savings

It has been confirmed by authoritative sources to the Daily Statesman that in spite of an intervention by the current management that led to annual savings of $7million on the cost of the water supplied by the plant, it was still not enough to rescue the GWCL from the “investment mess” created by the Mahama government.

Credible information available to the Daily Statesman indicates that a renegotiation of the dirty water deal by the new management resulted in reducing payment for water supplied by the Desalination Plant from US$24,000,000/annum to US$17,000,000/annum. 

Because of the extent of the rip-off, the new GWCL management had to bid its time studying the situation to enable it finalise other technical issues. For instance, there were no GWCL technicians on sight to monitor and verify operational activities to ascertain quality and quantity levels to enable it certify operational records and claims by the operators of the plant.

Shutdown

The GWCL shut the plant on October 15, 2017 and provided water from Kpong for its customers when the independent water company began throwing its weight about in a strategic meeting to resolve the ‘dirty’ issues surrounding the deal.

What is the latest on this dirty water deal entered into by the Mahama government for the country? Stay tuned for more.