Public-private pertnership and urban water delivery: A case of Ga East municipality

Abstract

The challenge in providing adequate drinking water has driven many governments in developing countries to either privatised their water systems entirely or engaged in partnership with the private sector. The study was undertaken to examine public-private partnership with reference to GWCL/AVRL in urban water supply in the Ga East Municipal. The International Benchmarking Network for Water and sanitation (IBNNET) was used to assess the performance ratios of GWCL/AVRL. Data was collected using semi-structured questionnaire from 246 households who were randomly selected using the systematic sampling method and purposive sampling method to select 4 key respondents. The data was presented in percentages, frequencies charts and graphs. The research showed that urban water supply is faced with financial constraints, level of unaccounted for water remains high (50%) despite a target of 26 percent operating cost recovery ratio is still low as well as bill collection rate. Thus urban water supply is no financially sustainable. Also respondent perception on water supply was poor, making them buy water at a higher cost from small scale water providers of which the source of water is unknown. This indicates that the involvement of private sector does not necessarily improve the water supply service as it has been professed by neoliberalism. It is recommended that government must show political commitment, opt for public-public partnerships (PUP) and support for community driven initiative in the provision of adequate water supply.