General News of Friday, 24 October 2014

Source: tv3network.com

Water rationing timetable out soon

The Ghana Water Company Limited (GWCL) says it will soon come out with a water rationing timetable to guide consumers as its operations are being affected by the nationwide load shedding exercise.

“We are also affected a great deal by the load shedding,” noted Michael Agyemang, the Head of Public Affairs of the Company.

“Any time there is a general outage, we also have our plants being affected because we don’t get power.”

He was speaking to TV3’s Sandra Amarquaye on Wednesday, October 22 when he made these known.

He said its treatment plants are powered by the national grid and so are shut down immediately there is no power.

Mr Agyemang said last week, for instance, the Company had to shut down its treatment plants cumulatively for 27 hours – 10 hours on Day 1, nine hours on Day 2 and eight hours on Day 3.

“Our operations is such that sometimes when the power is out for just one hour, we lose all the water that we have in the system and then when the power comes back again it takes about not less than six hours to start pumping again.”

He said this also affects treatment plants dotted across the country.

The Company, as a result of the load shedding, currently produces less than the 240 million gallons it is scheduled to produce for the country.