35% Tolon-Kumbungu residents said to be in need of potable water

Some 132,000 residents in the Tolon/Kumbungu district, representing 34 per cent of the about 201,000 population do not have access to potable water.

Similarly the East Gonja district also has about 92,000 of its residents lacking access to potable water.

Mr John Aduakye, Chief Hydrogeological Officer at the Community Water and Sanitation Agency office in Tamale disclosed this to the GNA in interview in Tamale on Monday.

He said only four out of ten people in the Northern Region had access to potable water and expressed regret about the situation, which needs urgent attention to reverse it.

He said a total of eight districts in the Northern Region including Central Gonja, Kpandai and Tamale had water coverage below 50 per cent.

Mr Aduakye, said even though available figures indicated that water coverage in the region had increased the situation was far from ending.

“Through a joint effort of development partners such as the European Union, World Bank, CIDA and government, the regional coverage had improved from 33 per cent in 2003 to 62 per cent in 2012 but the fact is that some of the schemes were not functioning due to unavailability of water, bad maintenance culture and its old nature. About 30 per cent of boreholes in the region currently had broken down”, he stressed.

He noted that about 700 boreholes, which were counted to be part of the regional water coverage, had broken down and added that plans were in place to rehabilitate 400 of them to improve the situation.

Mr Aduakye disclosed that in 2012 only seven out of the 20 districts had up to 70 per cent water coverage while the remaining 13 had between 30 to 67 per cent coverage of available schemes, including boreholes, hand dug wells, small town pipe system, limited mechanized schemes and Ghana Water Company schemes.

He assured that various studies showed that the region had enough underground water and would be able to serve people with potable water in the next ten years if government and development partners made it a priority and invest hugely in the sector.

“If this is not done then I am afraid water will continue to be a life and death issue in the northern region,” he said

Meanwhile, the GNA investigations showed that the treatment plant that serves the Tamale Metropolis is located at the TolonKumbungu District.

Source: GNA