Restructuring the delivery of clean water to rural communities in Ghana: the institutional and regulatory issues

Clean water is an important natural resource. In recent times, there has been a radical change in the institutional and regulatory mechanism for providing clean water to the rural communities of Ghana. The object of this paper is to examine the strengths and weaknesses of the two regimes for providing water to rural communities in Ghana. These are the traditional regime and the Community Water and Sanitation Program (CWSP). We shall argue that the strength of the traditional regime is that almost everybody knows the laws and institutions that regulate the use of water. Its major weakness is that water is used in an untreated stage and is not available all year round. The strength of the CWSP is that it treats water as an economic resource and it is managed in a manner that makes it sustainable. Its major weakness is that, for its execution, it depends on a number of state institutions which can be notoriously weak. Very little has also been accomplished on the sanitation aspect of the program.