support rain water harvesting

THE President, Prof. John Evans Atta Mills, has challenged stakeholders in the water and sanitation sectors to commit themselves to attaining the Millennium Development Goal (MDG) target of 54 per cent by 2015.
In a speech read on his behalf by Mr Alban S.K. Bagbin, the Minister of Water Resources, Works and Housing, at the opening of the second Ghana Water Forum in Accra yesterday, the President stressed the need for the country to develop a rainwater harvesting policy as an answer to averting the perennial floods that often resulted in the destruction of life and property with its attendant worsening of sanitation problems.
The three-day forum, which is on the theme: "Water and Sanitation Service Delivery in Ghana: The Sustainability Factor", has brought together major players in water and sanitation management to deliberate on issues affecting the sub-sector and to chart a path for the sector to achieve a sustainable water and sanitation delivery.
The President said the government would from next year allocate US$200 million under the recently launched Sanitation and Water for All (SWA) compact to run programmes in the water and sanitation sector with the view to meeting the MDG target.
He explained that improving water and sanitation hygiene would come to naught, if managers in the sector failed to rise to the occasion of adapting to climate change in view of the shortage of fresh water becoming a major ecological problem confronting most developing countries.
He added that as a commitment to achieving the MDGs, the Government of Ghana (GoG) and its development partners in the last few years expended more than US$700 million to provide potable water and access to good sanitation and that the country was on course to achieving the MDG target of 76 per cent for rural water and 85 per cent target for urban water coverage by 2015.
To give meaning to that commitment, President Mills announced that a loan facility of US$273 million had been secured from the Chinese Government to undertake expansion works at the Kpong Treatment Plant to further increase its capacity by an additional 40 million gallons of water per day.
“In addition to these, US$185 million worth of projects within the urban and rural areas are on-going and expected to be completed by 2011,” he said.
The Minister of Local Government and Rural Development, Mr Joseph Yieleh Chireh, noted that the forum, which had been instituted as an annual affair, was to build on the modest success achieved in last year’s event.
He said it was to serve as a platform for reviewing progress in the water and sanitation sector to showcase new developments within the sector for improved performance.
To that end, Mr Chireh said the ministry had instituted youth-based initiatives such a competition known as Ghana Junior Water Price, to encourage the youth to participate in water knowledge activities.