The Water Palaver

When Ghanaman is relaxing at home and hears a knock at the door, he is likely to suspect that a Jehovah Witness man show him the best tax-free way to heaven. If it is not the Jehovah Wit­ness man with the black bag, then it must be the landlord coming to talk nonsense.

“Yes, come in.” “You owe us ¢350,000 in water bills. We’re in to disconnect.”

“Wait a minute. Your presence is giving me heart attack, so come back later for payment.

Fact is I’m allergic to water bills.”

Some people don’t care a damn about electricity disconnection. No light, so what? What they are scared about is water cuts. They can cause instant diarrhoea. And soon, water and electricity costs are going to be increased, and an epidemic of diar­rhea is highly expected.

It is, however, very difficult to disconnect some consumers because they make conscious efforts not to get cut off.

One favourite method is to train a dog which can detect a disconnector from a normal human being and do the chasing out accordingly. The dog must have appetite for human leg or human balls.

Another way is to allow yourself to be disconnected and then you can go to the water or electricity company, dressed in suit with a deep-frown on your face. That is where you can blow your horn.

“The interior minister is my broth­er-in-law. I command you by state power to reconnect me before I change gears. You don’t respect? If you don’t know me go and ask. Kofi Annan was my classmate. If you play, I’ll deal with you at the United Na­tions level.”

Sometimes, officials can take the bluff as very authentic and proceed to re-connect Kofi Annan’s classmate. But others will feel they are doing their job and the interior-minister’s in-law’s big mouth has nothing to with the execution of official assign­ments.

“Well, we know the Interior-Min­ister is related to you. But the bill must be settled anyway. If you can settle half, we’ll re-connect and give you time to settle the rest.”

It turns out that the man finally settles the bill, but doesn’t even know how Kofi Annan like.

As for his relationship with the in­terior Minister, it can only be at best, a dog’s imagination.

At any rate, Ghanaians are waiting for the new utility rates and are also hopeful that a corresponding raise in salary will be in place to absorb the shock.

Now Electricity Company and Gha­na Water Company have many prob­lems they would have to solve. One of them is waste. With electricity, illegal connections are very common and many are using power and paying nothing for it.

Others are using air-conditioners and pay nothing because they con­nect the wires in such a way that power used does not go through the meter and is, therefore, not re­corded. What the company loses in a month countrywide is so huge that if it can be recovered, the company would be on rather good footing

The problem also is that, con­sumers who are disconnected have become wiser than the serpent. Some have taught themselves Basic Princi­ples in Electricity. Many housewives know the principles better than any electrical engineer at ECG.

When you disconnected power to their homes, they simply wait for five minutes and reconnect. No sweat!

It is a simple procedure they have repeated so many times that they are no longer worried about and discon­nection.

So bills pile up and ECG is helpless, and goes whining about the need to increase tariffs without really tack­ling the waste problem.

With water, it might be worse. Peo­ple have illegal connections through which they sell water for their own pockets. Some pipes have burst for over six months and no one is both­ered. People report leakages and no one is worried.

Ghana Water Company is not doing well because of waste. You can’t import expensive chemicals to purify water and let it go waster. No compa­ny can thrive on a system that is not bothered about waste.

So Ghana Water Company better wake up and save water. In some countries, water is imported. If we have it here, we should learn to con­serve it.