The government has taken over a $103 million debt owed by the Ghana Water Company Limited (GWCL) to foreign donors.

The move is aimed at enabling the company to carry out its responsibility for providing potable water to a greater majority of the people in the country.

The relief also comes at a time when the company is gearing up to receive a private operator to partner it in the delivery of water to the urban areas of the country.

The Managing Director of the GWCL Mr. Samuel Gerald Odartey Lamptey, who disclosed this in Accra, said,? We are delighted at the response of the government to the plight of the company, ?adding, this has significantly improved the accounting books of the company as of the end of the year.?

He said as a result of what the government had done for the company, it had put in place drastic measures to collect more than ?165 billion owed to the company by private consumers as of the end of October last year.

Mr. Lamprey said the company had contracted 13 private companies to retrieve all outstanding debts owed it.

He said the disconnection exercise to ensure that customers honored their obligations was on course and indicated that the company would continue to pursue defaulters until they settled their indebtedness to the company.

Mr. Lamptey said serious efforts were under way to improve the billing system of the company, saying,? We are working to ensure that the bills come to the consumers at most a month late, instead of two months.? He said the company was also working hard to reduce the amount of water that went waste during distribution.

The GWCL loses about 50 per cent of the water that is produced for distribution to consumers because of the state of pipelines, which were laid several decades ago.

To this end, Mr. Lamptey said the company would begin a major expansion and rehabilitation of its installations in the urban centres by the end of the first quarter of this year.

This was to improve water supply to all areas, which had no services and where supplies were not adequate enough.

The project, which forms part of the Ghana Urban Water Project, will be undertaken with a substantial proportion of the $103 million grant secured from the World Bank.

Mr. Lamptey said apart from the funds from the World Bank to carry out the project, the GWCL was investing an additional ?55 billion this year from its capital budget to do more pipe replacements and acquire more vehicles for its operating staff to improve revenue collection and also attend to emergencies on time.

He said the company was also sourcing additional funds from donors to carry out other projects alongside the urban water project to ensure that the vision of the company to meet 85 per cent coverage by 2015 was achieved.