Dehia Community and Oguaa Football for Hope Centre both in Cape Coast in the Central Region have each received a new water filtration tower dubbed “Aqua Tower.”
This was provided by Xylem Africa and Manchester City Football Club in collaboration with Planet Water Foundation and Play Soccer Ghana.
The two new towers will aid in providing for the daily drinking needs of 1, 800 people, reduce the burden of collecting water, and counter water-borne diseases, keeping children healthier and in school.
Answering questions about the water project after a press briefing at the Oguaa Football for Hope Centre, the Director of Play Soccer Ghana, Franklin Asuo mentioned that a project mainly on education was run between 2016 up to date and through that intervention it was identified that there were a number of communities that lacked water.
He said the project on education reached out to six communities in Cape Coast; in various basic schools.
“And through that intervention, we realized that there were challenges with regular water supply, there were challenges with drinking potable water, and so we brought this to the attention of our partners – Manchester City, Xylem,” he added.
This, Mr Asou said was followed by “an assessment to test for the water quality, the interviewing of community members and young leaders and putting all the information they had gathered together, they realized that there was a need to put in some intervention and we selected two communities to support through that assessment.”
On his part, the Strategy and Marketing Manager of Xylem Africa, Chetam Mistry said the Aqua Tower is simple Tower that draws water from a borehole.
Explaining how the Aqua Tower will operate, he said it’s a tower that takes water from a borehole, contains it in a tower, it has purification system attached to it, so that as soon as you open the tap, you have clean running water that’s drinkable.”
Before the towers’ arrival, it was found that collecting water required a lot of time for the people of Dehia.
According to UNICEF, across the world, women and children spend 200 million hours daily carrying water.
Mr. Mistry believes finding solutions to the scarcity of water in some parts of the world requires a collective effort.
As such he urged all businesses, communities and government to collaborate in a serious manner to ensure all communities have access to clean drinking water.
Under the guidance of Planet Water Foundation, Xylem employee volunteers joined forces with Manchester City fans, Club legend and ambassador Joleon Lescott and young leaders from Play Soccer Ghana to build the towers on the 1st and 2nd of February 2023. Local leaders and representatives from each of the partners unveiled the new towers, part of a collaboration to solve water issues across Africa.
The event formed part of Xylem Water Heroes Academy, a unique collaboration between Xylem and Manchester City’s global foundation, empowering young leaders in 10 cities around the world to solve local water challenges using the power of football.
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Source: Rosemond Asmah & Comfort Sweety Hayford/ATLFMNEWS
