BRIEF HISTORY

Until the early 1990s, the Ghana Water and Sewerage Corporation (GWSC) had been responsible for urban and rural water supply since 1965. During this period, there was low coverage of Rural Water Supply for rural people. This led to the creation of Rural Water Department within the GWSC in 1986 to give more attention to the provision of water and sanitation services for rural people. Some facilities were provided but these could not be sustained due to non-payment of tariffs by beneficiary communities and little or no maintenance by the centralised maintenance units of the GWSC.

The United Nations General Assembly declared the period 1981 – 1990 as the International Drinking Water and Sanitation Decade throughout the world.  The focus was to ensure that by the end of the decade, nations would have given priority attention to the delivery of water and sanitation facilities to their populace. The Ghana Government, in line with the agenda for the decade, initiated a review of its policies on water and sanitation provision to keep pace with the changing conditions in the country and on the international scene.

In 1987 therefore, a donor conference on water and sanitation was held at the Ambassador Hotel in Accra, at which pledges were invited from donors. In February 1991, about sixty participants from Sector Institutions and External Support Agencies (ESAs) met at Kokrobite for a Workshop to prepare the grounds for a Rural Water and Sanitation Sector Strategy. After four years of consultations, a National Community Water and Sanitation Programme (NCWSP) was launched in 1994, in line with the Government’s decentralization policy. The purpose was to establish an organization that would focus on rural water and sanitation provision which had lacked behind over the years due the GWSC centralized maintenance system. One of the major tenets of the NCWSP was the concept of Community Ownership and Management (COM), a strategy designed to instill a sense of communal commitment in beneficiary communities to enable them take charge of the management of water facilities. Subsequently, the Community Water and Sanitation Division (CWSD) was carved out the GWSC, and became a semi-autonomous unit to manage rural water and sanitation delivery. After four years of existence, it was deemed necessary to grant complete autonomy to the CWSD to give greater impetus to its work. As a result, the Division was transformed into the Community Water and Sanitation Agency (CWSA) by an Act of Parliament, Act 564 in December 1998, with the mandate to; “facilitate the provision of safe drinking water and related sanitation services to Rural Communities and Small Towns in Ghana.”

POLICY REFORM

In 2017, Community Water and Sanitation Agency (CWSA) initiated policy reforms in the Rural Water and Sanitation Sub-sector to redefine its role to include the management of small towns pipe water systems. The ultimate objective of the policy reform is to transform CWSA into a utility service organization with the mandate of providing and managing rural water supplies while providing support to communities and MMDAs in the area of sanitation, as it relates to safe confinement of excreta and provision of hygiene services. The outcome of the policy reforms is to ensure sustainable management of water supply services in rural communities and small towns through the application of technology and innovation to improve water safety; reduce non-revenue water; professionalize community water services management; mobilize internal resources to sustain existing water systems and construct new ones; and create support mechanisms for point water systems and sanitation management.