Rapid assessment of the water, sanitation and hygiene services sector in Ghana, 2008

Introduction

The WASHCost project aims at identifying the real disaggregated cost of water, sanitation and hygiene (WASH) services in rural and peri-urban areas, and the range of physical, social, economic and political factors that influence those costs. The project will collect and collate information relating to the real disaggregated life cycle costs of WASH service delivery to poor people in rural and peri-urban areas in Ghana. The work will involve decision makers and stakeholders in analysing this data and support them to use it in the planning and governance of WASH service delivery. WASHCost will embed improved pro-poor decision-making processes in lead WASH organisations through a platform that brings stakeholders together to discuss WASH service delivery.

The report has been prepared with substantial input from liaisons at the Ministry of Water Re-sources Works and Housing (MWRWH), Community Water and Sanitation Agency (CWSA) and the Ministry of Local Government Rural Development and Environment (MLGRDE). The main reason for their involvement is to ensure ownership of the output from the WASHCost Project by these organisations. The consultant also met with a number of actors to discuss several issues relating to organisational mandates, availability of unit cost information, use of information and communication technology (ICT) and training. Comments and contributions from 2 launch workshops have also informed the final report.

Content of the report

The report has 11 sections, Section 1 presents a brief introduction to the study. Section 2, presents the overview of the WASH sector in Ghana, a description of actors, institutions and organisations in section 3. The sections 4 to 9 examine the institutional mapping for the various sector actors. Section 10 briefly describes WASH pro-poor initiatives whilst section 11 presents the observations and conclusion.

Main observations

Ghana has developed a functional institutional framework for WASH delivery through a set of policies, legal and regulatory mechanisms as well as organisations with well-defined mandates. There remain several challenges, though. According to the National Water Policy, these sector challenges include, among others:
• Improving access to good sanitation
• Improving WASH services to poor urban communities
• Increasing the availability of financing for the sector
• Improving the capacity of District Assemblies and lower level structures to play their roles adequately

Generation and use of unit cost information

The study observed that the concept of WASH unit cost is understood by many actors in the sector. However, this understanding is limited to the capital cost of delivering the facility. Thus for example, CWSA has unit cost information on the construction of a small town water system, expressed as $ 45/capita (hardware) and the cost of community development (software) at $ 700/community. In part this is explained by the fact that communities and DAs are required to take responsibility for the operation, maintenance and minor repairs to the system once it has been handed over. Therefore sufficient attention has not been given to examining what it cost to sustain the service – including operation and maintenance, capital maintenance, backup support (technical, financial, management), capacity-building - provided at different levels by Water Boards, DAs, DWSTs/RWST, service providers etc.

It follows from the above that unit cost information has been relevant more for the implementation of new projects, than for ensuring their sustainability. The latter would imply a systematic collection, interpretation and use of disaggregated performance data to support decision making. In respect of urban water delivery the understanding of unit costs relates to rates used in preparing project estimates. In relation to the costs of service delivery, these can be obtained from the monthly, quarterly and annual reports, and the PURC uses these in the determination and approval of tariffs. Whilst the PURC has taken a position not to micro-manage GWCL, it has been pointed out that an understanding of the disaggregated costs and efficiency of these costs will assist in their regulatory decisions.

The MWRWH is mindful of the importance of unit cost information and is undertaking a Sector-wide project - Improvement of Water Sector Performance Management Framework (IWSPMF) – that aims to ‘establish objective sector benchmarking (e.g. unit costs) for W&S implementation and for Operation and Maintenance (O&M) costs’. The ministry notes that “the unit costs are needed for realistic investment planning, for benchmarking the sector performance, for example when undertaking value for money studies and for improving the transparency and accountability in project planning, tendering and contract administration. As with other unit cost studies the idea is to look at capital costs only. The WASHCost project could develop useful synergies with that of the ministry.