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Ghana’s financing of Water, Sanitation and Hygiene (WASH) Projects has not been the best, Mr Fred Smiet, First Secretary Water and Climate, Ghana Netherlands WASH Programme (GNWP), the Embassy of the Netherlands, has said.

He said the GNWP focuses on integrated urban water and sanitation and has an indicative budget of € 200 million, which includes contributions from the Dutch Government, the Ghana Government and private sector.

Mr Smiet, who said this in Accra on Monday at the opening of the GNWP/the Netherlands Enterprise Agency (RVO) Workshop, explained that under the project the Dutch Government policy is to move away from 100 per cent grant to partnership with the Ghana Government.

He said the project sought to promote public private partnership and that they would have to explore other options of financing it.

The project implementation started in 2014, and it is expected that, water, sanitation and hygiene delivery would have seen marked improvements at the end of the project in 2020 through the provision of infrastructure, behavioral change, and capacity building.

The two-day workshop under the auspices of the Dutch Government with the support of RVO, brought together stakeholders in the WASH industry for them to discuss the rationale behind the GNWP and to align and deepen the dialogue among all stakeholders.

Mr Michel de Zwart, the Project Advisor, RVO Ghana WASH Programme, said the workshop would afford stakeholders the opportunity to reflect on the activities and the way forward.

Mr Frederick Addai, Director of Water at the Ministry of Water Resources, Works and Housing, said sanitation and water are key to public health and for that matter it is the desire of government to contribute towards any programme that would improve the provision of sanitation and water facilities.

He said efforts are being made to initiate security posts in some of the key areas where encroachment of water facilities are taking place; adding that the Weija water treatment plant had a security post to ward off the encroachers.

He said, in the communities with water treatment plants, there are integrated resources management project teams in place; which is a combination of the local people and government structures to ensure that the water bodies are kept clean.

The GNWP is a joint project between the Government of Ghana and the Netherlands.

Under the GNWP, Ghanaian and Dutch private companies have developed business models to deliver drinking water and to improve sanitation by turning waste into profitable products like compost and biogas.

It consist of 20 projects of which five have been awarded grants in the fields of water, sanitation, hygiene, waste and/or integrated water resource management; the Embassy administers these projects under the GNWP.

In addition, the RVO has awarded 15 Projects within the framework of three PPP programmes, namely, Ghana Wash Window, also a component of GNWP, Sustainable Water Fund and the Food Security Programme.