The significance of water to the fight against Covid-19, a pandemic that has plagued the entire world, inflicted havoc on the world’s economy and became a global conundrum, cannot be over emphasized. Due to the need to continuously wash hands under running water with soap and keeping to high standards of personal hygiene, water consumption by Ghanaians has certainly shot up and requires water supply to increase accordingly. Clearly, if water resources are not managed well during this dark times, the country may run into acute water shortage. It is public knowledge that Ghana is yet to meet the water needs of all citizens.

It is at the backdrop of these looming challenges that, Water for Rural Africa (WRA) is calling on all citizens and industry to be responsible and practice effective water management to support the fight against Covid-19 to a conclusive end.

Water demand and supply management constitute two different ways of addressing human water use. Water is wasted and inefficiently used by many sectors, consequently increasing demand of water. Therefore, an obvious way to meet increasing demand is to increase the efficiency of use and supply, thereby making more water available within the constraints of existing supply.

According to Integrated Water Resource Management (IWRM), efficiency in water management must be applied across all sectors and at all levels including community, industry, agriculture and household level. For situations and levels of management that involve many different small uses and water appliances (such as residential water use), demand management must be extremely effective to reducing the overall water consumption. At the industrial level, large amounts of water can be conserved by changing the way water is used (e.g. decreasing pressure) or by reusing water multiple times for different functions that require successively lower quality water.

In a developing nation like Ghana, water supply is insufficient or irregular and therefore a combination of supply and demand management is crucial to achieving water security.

WRA observed that, after the president of Ghana, His Excellency Nana Addo Dankwa Akuffo Addo announced the intervention of absorbing water bills of citizens, social media witnessed many irresponsible posts of videos where individuals and groups are seen wasting water in the name of freebee. We therefore call on the public to report such culprits to the security agencies for punitive actions to be taken against them. Citizens must observe responsible ways of water usage by not leaving taps open and making sure that all damaged pipes are reported to the required authorities for prompt attention.

Citizens and industry are encouraged to fix drips by replacing worn tap washers, reduce the amount of water used by toilets, consider a water sense labelled shower head, reduce outdoor watering, check for broken or clogged sprinkler heads, fix leaks in all plumbing fixtures, install water-efficient devices.

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