The New Juaben North Municipal Health Directorate of the Ghana Health Service is worried over high water bills being charged health facilities in the municipality in recent times by public water distributor, Ghana Water Company Limited (GWCL).
Many health facilities in the municipality are struggling to settle its water bills. The Jumapo Health Center for instance was disconnected over Ghc12,000 accumulated bills for 2021.
The acting Municipal Health Director for New Juaben North Nana Yaa Konadu Gyesaw told Starr News “It is a challenge for all my facilities that do not have mechanized borehole, the water bill is too exorbitant, we get occasions where we even get disconnected from the national grid that we have to go negotiate for reconnection to be done so it really a border for us and we are still in talks with the municipal assembly to get us mechanized boreholes at all our health facilities so that the thing of unpaid water bills will be a thing of the past”.
After disconnection of water supply to Jumapo Health Center, an indigene of Jumapo community living abroad through Jumapo Development Association funded the construction of a mechanized borehole facility for the Jumapo health center to wean it off the GWCL supply system.
“The water has come not just for the clinic alone but for the residential facilities ,for the midwives and then for the physician assistants. It is going to help immensely because it is also going to help to cut down the water cost.
We pay the water bill out of our internally generated fund so this really has come as a relief, is going to give us a bit of respite so that the money we use to pay the water bills can also be used to channel other things for the development of the facility,” the acting municipal health director Nana Yaa Konadu said.
Commissioning the mechanized borehole, the In -charge of the Jumapo Health Center Mrs. Winifred Paddy said the average OPD attendance is about 25 to 30 people in a month with average delivery of 10 same periods therefore the facility could not fathom the outrageous bills by GWCL since last year.
“Basically we are on the Ghana Water Company water system but for the past one year the bills we have been receiving were outrageous we could have a current bill of ghc600, sometimes ghc800 even the recent one was Ghc1000 but for a facility like Jumapo health center our average OPD attendance is about to 25 to 30 people in a month and our deliveries averagely is 10 deliveries in a month so the bills we were too much, and most of our sources of funding are from NHIS and the reimbursement takes a longer time and even when we get the money we have to pay medical bills and our casual workers so paying that huge sums of water was a problem,” Winfred Paddy lamented.
According to the senior coordinator of Jumapo Development Fund group Engineer Maxwell Oppong, the construction of the mechanized borehole at cost of Ghc25,000 is another intervention demonstrating the commitment of the association to the community having renovated and furnished the facility with medical equipment two years ago.
