Rotary USAID Ghana borehole pump 550-550 — Upon arrival and meeting with the WSMT chair, the Rotary WASH advocates discovered that both boreholes were no longer working, with one of them having been broken since April 2019. The WSMT chair told the Rotary team that in both cases, the connecting rods had dropped. The WSMT chair said he had reached out to the contractor to fix the pumps but the latter had yet to show up.

Rotary USAID Ghana Tebu Agbi stream child — Deprived of its main sources of safe water, the community members had resorted to fetching water from a muddy stream nearby. Many children had the burden of filling jerry cans with unsafe water to bring to their homes for cleaning and cooking.

Rotary USAID Ghana Tebu Agbi WSMT meeting — The Rotary team called a meeting with all the members of the WSMT who were around: the chairman, the hygiene inspector, the secretary, the pump care supervisor and the treasurer. Only two other WSMT members were missing.

Rotary USAID Ghana Tebu Agbi passbook — The WSMT keeps a passbook, a physical notebook held by bank account holders which records on paper the details of all banking transactions, to keep track of funds collected from the fees that households pay for the use of borehole water.

Rotary USAID Ghana Tebu Agbi review passbook — A member of the Rotary team reviewed the passbook and noticed some discrepancies.

Rotary USAID Ghana Tebu Agbi passbook entries — The passbook balance was overstated by 100 Ghana cedis. The Rotary team asked the WSMT to rectify this with the bank. The Rotary team also discovered that about 400 Ghana cedis in funds collected in the period following the formation of the WSMT were spent on feeding the contractors building the boreholes. The Rotary team encouraged the WSMT to get this amount refunded.

Rotary USAID Ghana Tebu Agbi WSMT spider web — The Rotary team took the WSMT members through a participatory self-assessment of their responsibilities using a tool called a spider web. The WSMT members scored their performance on ten indicators: WSMT meetings, O & M fund mobilization, borehole maintenance, community meetings, environmental cleanliness, latrine promotion, hand washing promotion, facility management plan, community action plan and record keeping.

Rotary USAID Ghana Tebu Agbi WSMT spider web final — The resulting spider web identified critical gaps such as the lack of a facility management plan, the lack of knowledge of tippy taps to promote handwashing, and the poor participation of WSMT members in WSMT meetings. The Rotary team left the WSMT with recommendations to act upon.

Monitoring communities to prevent backsliding

Tebu Abgi is a rural community in Ghana’s Greater Accra region in which the partnership drilled two boreholes in December 2018 and helped setup a 7-member water and sanitation management team (WSMT) to oversee the operations and maintenance of the water services. In August 2019, a Rotary WASH advocacy team made up of Oppong Agyare Agyeman-Anane (rotary club of Accra Ridge), Constance Baiden (rotary club of Tema), Rockson Dutenya (rotary club of Accra Osu RE) and Kingsley Johnson Amoako-Atta (rotary club of Accra-Achimota) dropped in the community to check on the situation in the community eight months after the boreholes were handed to the community.

Contributed by Rotary member Rockson Dutenya. Edited by Mohamed Keita

8 photos

View Gallery