Abstract

Despite the essence of water supply and decent sanitation services to mankind, access to these basic services is a challenge in the Awutu-Senya East Municipality. The paper examined accessibility to water supply and sanitation services in the Awutu Senya East Municipality and the accompanying consequences. In the analysis of water provision responsibility, it was established that the contribution of private individuals constituted 64.2% of daily water production while public water provision effort constituted 35.8%. In spite of the enviable contributions of private individuals in water provision efforts in the Municipality, however, about 45% of the water sources are salty while 28% are impure and contaminated. Aside the inability of the Ghana Water Company Limited to supply desirable water quantities in the Municipality, the Assembly has also not been able to regulate the prices charged on water by private water operators, or make meaningful effort to augment water provision in the Municipality. Management of sanitation in the Municipality has proven to be daunting for authorities. The factors that lead to poor sanitation in the Municipality are diverse, ranging from weak institutional capacity to wrong attitudes. Consequently, the inefficiency of waste collection companies encourages indiscriminate disposal of wastes in the Municipality. For this reason, the Municipal Assembly should issue a minimum water quality requirement to all identified private water operators in order to ameliorate the quality problems associated water supply in the Municipality. Additionally, the Assembly should devise a better monitoring tool for ensuring that tasks assigned to waste collection companies in the Municipality are efficiently executed.

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