Bringing safe water to the doorsteps of community members

By: Stephen Frimpong Boadi 

Over the past years, the Builsa South Area Programme has collaborated with the Ghana Integrated Water, Sanitation and Health Program (GI-WASH) and various decentralised departments to provide safe water to needy communities, schools and healthcare facilities. Many such water facilities are boreholes and limited mechanised systems that provide communal fetching points for households. This helps households to have access to safe water for consumption and other livelihood activities.

Through the efforts of the Area Programme, a household water connection pilot scheme was instituted, where households were supported to pipe water from a mechanized system to the premises of selected households.

In all, 26 and 17 households now have access to safely managed water services in Builsa and Kassena districts respectively.

Monitoring reports reveal that women now spend less time in search of water and use the time saved to engage in other productive ventures such as shea butter processing, farming and participating in meetings. Also, children can now report to school early and participate in lessons due to less time spent searching for water.

Women also reported that household connections have eliminated the potential risk of water pollution.