Spintex Road at Rainbow: shoddy work again?

Following-up with the Spintex Road works... I went yesterday and was surprised to see that the works were over and the road open to all types of vehicles. Here it what it looks like, seen from opposite Housemart.


On the face of it, there is nothing but reasons to rejoice: job completed fast, brand new road. Looking closer, though, one can notice that the surface gravel is very thin indeed and the laterite beneath is already beginning to show through.


One can see other weak points which may yield soon too:


Note that the resurfacing exercise was completed less than a week ago. The same methods as previously were used: very sparse scattering of gravel, then sprinkling of liquid tar. The picture below shows the method, as seen from the side of the road:


Last week, I expressed doubt about the treatment of where this new section transitions with the older one. I am afraid this part will erode fast. This is what it looks like now:

Lastly, I was surprised to see that the storm drains, which were built a few months ago, have been hammered down in several places. I reckon the reason is to make the flow of rainwater drain quicker, but I question the method:

I will keep following up on these works. I hope I'm wrong and the road will last. I'm afraid it won't, though, since the method used was the same that didn't work only a few months ago.

Countrywide "loss of electricity supply", a/k/a "lights off"

I've been monitoring the electricity issue for a few days now and finally found an article published online a mere 4 hours ago by modernghana.com.

It transpires from this that the power cut sustained Monday night was not local, not even affecting the whole of Accra, but countrywide.

GRIDCo (I haven't been able to identify a website for this company) apparently issued a statement on Tuesday afternoon, explaining the event as

an explosion in equipment used for measuring power flows and a resultant fire outbreak, which affected other nearby equipment.

This led to the loss of all generating units and some transmission lines within the National Power System(1)

Better late than never. We now have an explanation. We are also warned of more power cuts to come:

GRIDCo has requested the Electricity Company of Ghana (ECG) to reduce supply to consumers in Accra by 50 MW in order to prevent overloading on the two operating lines to the Achimota substation.(2)

Although the specifics are not disclosed, chances are that we'll have staggered cuts for an undetermined period of time, that is, while

GRIDCo is working around the clock to restore the line to service within the shortest possible time(3)

What about the power cut of last Friday/Saturday? A mere dress rehearsal? Are we to understand that there are 2 different issues: this accident, which GRIDCo felt inclined to communicate about, albeit quite late, and other "regular" power cuts?

(1), (2) & (3) "Ghana Grid explains widespread power outage in Accra, Tema"; modernghana.com, April 22, 2009

A very loud silence

This morning I bought Daily Graphic and The Statesman, thinking I would find some mention of the long power cut we suffered Monday night, either in the form of an article or of a press release published by VRA, ECG, or whomever is supposed to be in charge. No such thing.

Instead, the first page of Daily Graphic showed in caps and bold, white on black letters:

Energy sector needs $10bn (to finance initiatives in next 5 years, says minister)

I won't waste too much time asking why dollars, when we have our own cedi. Yes, the cedi erodes every day but still, it's our currency, the one in which most of the audience of this paper earns a living and makes expenses day in, day out.

The article, which continues on page 3, describes what the Energy Minister, Dr Joe Oteng-Adjei, disclosed to members of the media yesterday.

Dr Oteng-Adjei noted that the vision of the energy sector was to assure universal access and choice of modern energy forms to all Ghanaians, which was intended to be achieved by 2020.

He said the ministry also envisioned a sector that would contribute significantly to national revenue and economic growth by becoming a net exporter of oil and power by 2012 and 2013.(1)

That every Ghanaian will have access to energy by the year 2020 is commendable. There is no doubt it will help development tremendously. Exporting power as soon as 2013 is excellent news too. What I don't quite get is how this will be achieved in less than 4 years. More specifically, how the country's power generation capacity will be almost trebled so fast.

He said at the inception of the new government in January, the installed operational power generation capacity in the country was 1,810 megawatts

The objective of the government, he said, was to achieve a target of 5,000 MW of installed power generation capacity in the medium term, as that level of capacity would enable the country to supply adequate power to meet growth in national electricity demand and also for export to neighbouring countries.(2)

I would rise and applaud at such wonderful news if I were not bothered by a terribly pedestrian question: where will the money come from? To understand this point better, let's get back to the beginning of the article:

He said while the government would continue to inject funds into the sector when available, a major policy shift was to encourage energy sector institutions to raise a substantial portion of their capital investment requirements on their own without recourse to the government.(3)

That gives me pause. "When available"... In clear, there is no definite budget earmarked for that project, and energy sector institutions will get whatever surplus, if any, there is when everything else is taken care of. "On their own"... The balance of this indefinite amount granted by the government has to be procured on the market. What these few lines seem to mean, to me, is that there is close to no money at all to execute this "vision". Isn't it pure wizardry?

It won't escape the reader that this meeting was held the very morning after the latest night-long power cut which, I'm told, affected most of the ATMA (Accra Tema Metropolitan Area); yet, not a single word was said about it. Is there a consensus about not asking uncomfortable questions (the blatant failure of our system to provide uninterrupted, quality power would definitely come like a fly in the ointment of this extremely attractive picture of Ghana in only 3-4 years time)? Or are people of the media avoiding to state the obvious, routine, "normal" situation of highly unreliable power supply?

This is scary. We, as a country, seem to find it "normal" that we don't have power for 10 or 20 hours on end. We, as a country, as exemplified by the people of the media, our Minister of Energy, and the communications people of VRA, ECG and maybe GRIDCO (they do have communications people, don't they?), in this instance, have already resigned ourselves to unreliable supply, appalling service, and non-existent communication. This string of deceptively good news, and the way they are reproduced indiscriminately in the media, is all the more shocking and saddening.

(1), (2), (3) Daily Graphic, Wednesday, April 22, 2009

Lights off = Development off

This morning, my better half (currently in Britain) told me to listen to a programme titled Nana Online, on a Ghanaian Internet-based radio: http://www.hotdigitalradio.com/. One of the topics was the power cuts we've had over the last few days and, notably, last night, which seems to have affected all the ATMA (Accra and Tema Metropolitan Area).

I wish I could have listened to it myself, but unfortunately Vodafone (ex GT Broadband) has been playing up and with my nerves for the last few days. This morning I spent almost two hours on phone with their hotline and, from terribly unstable, my connection went down altogether. Well, this is another topic, albeit not totally unrelated to my concern(s) of today.

In my area (Baatsonaa), the electricity first went off at 6.30pm yesterday evening, to come back one hour later. I had only started rejoicing when it went off again and we went to sleep in the dark. Light came back fleetingly at some point (I'm not sure if it was once or twice) during the night, then back on for good at 4am this morning.

As readers may remember, this was not the first long powercut this 'season' (although I certainly hope there is no such thing as a powercuts season like we have a rainy season).

Last Friday and again last night, I checked the time when electricity went off and came back on and noticed that it is cut off on the hour or half hour and is put back on likewise. Sharp. I therefore think we are not dealing with random, unscheduled cuts, the kind that could occur in case of material breakdown.

A quick visit to VRA's ("Four Decades of Reliable Power Supply") and ECG's websites show that neither company felt they owed consumers any explanation. It's remarkable, indeed, that neither has a "Press Releases" section. They are not communicating and don't seem to have any intention of communicating anyway.

The feedback message I left on ECG's website last Sunday is unanswered so far.

Beside the sheer annoyance of these powercuts, the lack of communication, the disregard for the consumer, my concern is the following:

How can any country develop without reliable electricity and water?

Individuals are all affected, to various extents, by the lack of electricity or its unreliability. The lack /unreliability of electricity means lack of fridges, freezers, fans, etc., or their short life span, due to power surges or brownouts; the same goes for lighting devices, which break, fuses blow, etc. The consequences in terms of individual development are several:

1. People lose their household appliances and therefore their investment, and are in fact made poorer by this persistent situation;
2. The lack or inefficiency of various conservation means lead to food spoilage, reduces the amount available per person -leading to hunger for the poorer- and exposes everyone, from the newborn baby to the elderly, to various digestive disorders, illnesses, and death;
3. Light-lessness means that schoolchildren and students cannot study as much as they may want or need, or have to do so in exceedingly difficult conditions.

The impact on the economy at large is many sided: loss of opportunities, loss of investment, loss of workdays, need to tie-up investments in an alternative power supply (generator) which is expensive to run too, failure to attract investment, inability to run a company reliably, to keep the costs of production competitive internationally, etc.

"Electricity for all" and the "Right to electricity" are slogans sweet to the ear. Realistically, we seem to be very far from achieving the first; and little more than a handful of idealists believe in the second.

I believe that money is not the main issue. The easiest explanation is that we suffer because we are poor. However, I think it is only part of the explanation. We suffer because we lack vision. We suffer because we lack a holistic approach. We suffer because we don't really believe, deep down, that things can be otherwise. That we can deal with our problems. That it is up to us to define where we want to be in 10, 20, or 50 years from now and to devise a path to reach this target. Then we'll work all the more happily and relentlessly that we'll have taken our future in our own hands, for a change, and above all b-e-l-i-e-v-e that we are able to succeed.

Water at last!

Rain started this week. I don't know if there is a relationship between the rains and mains water, but I had the lovely surprise this morning, while tapping my tank gently (a habit formed over months of dryness of taps and ordering of trucks to provide for this essential of life), to realise that it was full!

This seems trivial, but it is the first time since December 2008 that my tank fills from the mains.

I should not even have to mention it. Water supply should be a given. Especially when you pay your bills on time every month. Whenever I forget, I find the following statement on the next bill (a GHS40 (GBP18.91, USD27.97, EUR21.45) lump sum):

"Pay at once to avoid disconnection"

Can you see the irony in this?

Powerless

I know this will not help the opinion a few of my readers have of me. Yes I'm Don Quixote in drag and keep exposing things everybody else knows are "the way things are done here". I am fully aware of this too, actually. What I don't and sincerely hope I won't accept in my lifetime is that they are "normal" or that I (or anybody else) should live with it, put up with it, resign myself to it.

This week was marked by two events:

• the onset of the rainy season: we've had three downpours since last Monday, which is good news as far as I am concerned, since Ghana is very much an agricultural country.
• the onset of what I hope is not a season of long powercuts.

"Lights off" have taken a dramatic turn with cuts lasting anytime between two and twenty (yes, 20!) hours. The Daily Graphic publishes every day an update of the level of water in Akosombo dam. My understanding is that the lower the level, the more conservation we need to tide us over till the rains come to increase the level again, the idea being that we don't want to run (completely) dry in the meantime. Since I haven't bought the papers lately, I set out to find the information online.

VRA (Volta River Authority), whose

primary function is to generate and supply electrical energy for industrial, commercial and domestic use in Ghana

indeed have a website where they publish daily updates of the water level in the dam. As of yesterday, April 18, 2009, the level was said to be 257.34ft, versus 248.13ft on the same day last year. The minimum operating level being 240ft, it seems that we are still above it and in better shape than last year at the same period. How comes, then, that we suffer such protracted cuts?

Since the VRA's website includes neither a "press releases" page nor any public interest notice about interruption of supply forecasts, I went on to the ECG (Electricity Company of Ghana) website, since the company's mission is

[to] provide quality electricity sevices to support economic growth and development in Ghana

in the hope that they would provide information as to why we should put up with the inconvenience. I was disappointed again. The website seems mostly to be there to inform the consumers about the various rates and ways they can pay their bills. In fact, ECG seems to devote quite a lot of time and energy to make sure that we, the consumers, perform our part of the contract, while their concern for their own performance appears far less obvious.

I found a page called "Feedback" where I posted the following:

Dear Sirs,

I am writing to express my concern with the protracted power cuts sustained this week in my neighbourhood (Baatsonaa, Accra). In particular, the whole area has been without light between 7pm Friday 17 April 2009 and 3pm Saturday 18 April 2009.

Could you please explain the reason for these power cuts and whether we should prepare to face more interruptions of supply in the foreseeable future?

Thank you for your prompt reply.

Yours faithfully,

E3AYO

I hope it won't come too much as a shock if I tell you I won't hold my breath waiting for their reply. Any website where the current date is stated as

Monday, October 19, 2009

is highly suspicious of being manned by incompetent and/or negligent people.

A last word: ECG's stated vision is

"To be among the leading Electricity Distribution Companies in Africa in terms of Quality, Safety and Reliability."

I only wish. Actually, I'm not really interested to know how ECG fares in comparison with other African electricity distribution companies. I just want reliable light.

Ghana road works

Someone who read my previous post about roads in Ghana asked me whether I was visiting Ghana for the first time. No sir! I think he meant that I should know by now that this is "the way it works here" and that I should be "reasonable" and stop complaining about it or fighting the situation. With due respect, I think this gentleman was as wrong as one can be. Yielding to warped reasoning or practices is the worst thing one can do. In my opinion, a concerned citizen's duty is to denounce what doesn't work and expose the harm corrupt persons, at all levels, are doing to this country.

So, at the risk of being considered naive, I will keep commenting when I come across bent practices.


Yesterday I took the small section of Spintex Road I described in a previous post and saw people and machines hard at work. I didn't have my camera with me and had to take pictures with my mobile phone, hence the lesser quality of today's pictures, for which I apologise.


Grey gravel was being spread out and packed down. My laywoman question is whether one shouldn't be more consistent about it, especially at both ends of the section being reworked. Won't this part be weaker if not strictly delimited, the depth of gravel the same as on other sections of the road and the packing as strong as elsewhere? I'm just thinking alout here. As I said, I don't know a thing about road surfacing.


In several places, the laterite soil could be seen through the gravel. Won't this lead to foreseeable structural weaknesses later on?

Finally, and sometimes I feel like laughing it off, storm drains were put in place several months ago and when the soil was spread out, both laterite and grey gravel were pushed in the drains, filling them in parts, and several labourers were busy shoveling them out. Doing and undoing is still working and I understand they are paid by the day. As far as they are concerned, whatever the job is, it's still paid work.

Last night we had a very big rain again. I wonder how far the labourers had gone into freeing the drains from soil and gravel and what this section of the road looks like now. I'll try and make time to go and have a look today, if my (untarred) street is passable.

More comments and pictures soon!

Clean water for all: the impossible challenge?

Ghana, and Accra in particular, is said to be filthy. Having travelled in many West and Central Africa countries, I can say that relatively speaking, the situation is not that bad. But then, nobody wants to compare themselves with the worst situation possible and anybody seeking self-improvement should set ambitious aims and work out a plan to achieve them gradually. The same goes for countries.

I am always a bit uneasy about recommending the masses to apply basic principles of hygiene when I know full well that tap water is not a given in this country and even not in its capital city. Contrary to our honoured Vice-President Mahama, I don't think Accra's filth is a laughing matter:

Vice President Mahama, making a joke about the level of filth in Ghana, ...(1)

This widespread filth is a public health hazard, Mr Vice-President. I think it's unfortunate that you find it funny.


My main topic today was however not rubbish collection (or the lack of) but a related hygiene-threatening concern: the lack of running water in Accra. According to the operating company itself (Aqua Vitens Rand Ltd (AVRL), a private company contracted by Ghana to manage the distribution of water), the network was never designed to supply the Accra Tema Metropolitan Area (ATMA) as it is now.

First, average water supply in ATMA is about 82 million gallons per day from Weija and Kpong Treatment Plants. In contrast, demand is over 150 million gallons per day, which leaves a deficit of nearly 70 million gallons per day, even in the best of times.(2)

This means that even working at capacity, tap water production can only satisfy about half of the demand. That is, "in the best of times" which, as we all know, are not a daily occurrence.


The operating company goes on to explain that they are not the only ones to blame for the acute shortage we witness day in, day out in Accra:

When there’s a mere five-minute power-cut, it takes at least five hours to restore water flow. Therefore the impact of these occurrences on water supply is enormous.(3)

How many five-minute power cuts have you suffered since, say, December 2008? I chose this December 2008 mark because it is when I started buying water every week for my household. We haven't heard or seen the water flow at all from mid-December 2008 till March 2009. Since then, we have had two days with water flowing from the mains. If this explaination is right and is not just a diversion exercise engineered by AVRL, it means that each tiny power cut sends us five hours back in the queue at the pump, figuratively speaking. Since I've read this press release a few months ago, I've been more attentive to power cuts and noted that, on average, we've had 2-3 cuts a day, of 2 to 20 minutes usually, sometimes up to 6 hours.


The implications of this persistent shortage are several. The first one is that our youth spend an inordinate amount of time fetching water. I am sure you noticed the youth with 4 empty containers is wearing school uniform shorts. Energies that could be much better used doing something productive or improving their education are wasted every day.

The second one is that there is no way hygiene can prevail when it is so expensive (not only in financial terms, but also in terms of time and energy spent) for people to procure enough water to wash their hands as much as is recommended, have water available to flush toilets, wash and rinse the dishes properly and thoroughly, etc.


Another scandal is that even public hospitals experience water shortages. AVRL maintains that they provide continuous supply to public health facilities, and that any shortage is due to the hospitals' installations themselves.

“AVRL does not ration water to Korle Bu due to the strategic importance of the hospital,” Nana Yaw Barnie, communications officer for AVRL’s Accra-West Region.

“The water problem at Korle Bu on Monday was caused by the hospital’s difficulty in pumping water from its own private water reservoir to the various blocks,” he said.

“When AVRL supplies water to Korle Bu, it first goes into a reservoir from where the hospital itself pumps to the locations it deems appropriate. This has always been the practice,” Barnie said. “And on Monday there was enough water in the hospital’s reservoir.”(4)

I had occasion to visit the NICU (Neonatal Intensive Care Unit, where newborns in need of intensive care are treated) at Korle Bu in February, 2008 and saw Polytanks sitting in the corridor leading to it and orderlies filling buckets from these tanks to supply NICU. Due to personal painful moments, the idea didn't occur to me to take pictures of the scene.

Reading AVRL's press release, though, it seemed to me that this problem was restricted to Korle Bu teaching hospital. I'm therefore surprised to read that an association of Indian women in Accra felt necessary to donate a water tank to another public health center at Ridge.

The president of the association, Mehek Mohanani, during the presentation, said the group paid a visit to the hospital sometime ago and realized that the water reservoir serving the Unit was not adequate.(5)

Certainly if the water supply had been continuous and adequate no such charitable deed would have been necessary?

Our country wants to develop and leave behind the "least developed nation" status to become an "emerging country", and even one of the new "tigers" of the 21st century. We cannot seriously hope to achieve this without being able to ensure proper sanitation for all. Health issues are and will continue to be in the foreseeable future one of the factors that impede development.

I sincerely hope this new administration will give health and sanitation a serious look and deal with the most pressing issues. Let's stop joking about our future and work at achieving our development goals.

According to the UN Millennium Development Goals initiative,

Promote hand-washing and treatment of home drinking water.
and
Prevent and provide effective treatment of pneumonia, diarrhoea, malaria and other infectious diseases.(6)

are part of MDG 4, Reduce child mortality. Poor quality water (the kind we buy by the gallon in the absence of filtered tap water) is one of the most important factors in diarrhoea and kills numerous babies, children and even adults. Others are made weak by it and cannot work as much as needed towards the improvement of their individual situations and that of Ghana in general.

Ghana is committed to the achievement of the MDGs. Clean water and hygiene for all are an intrinsic and necessary part of her success in that area.

A last word. I've just discovered that AVRL launched a call centre. I am not sure whether every person paying a monthly bill without receiving a drop of water should call them until they perform their part of the contract. Click here to read their press release.

(1) http://www.ghanaweb.com/GhanaHomePage/NewsArchive/artikel.php?ID=158272
(2), (3) http://avrl-ghana.com/pages/posts/advertiserrsquos-statement--avrl-explains-recent-acute-water-shortage22.php?p=5
(4) http://avrl-ghana.com/pages/posts/press-release--avrl-denies-korle-bu-water-shortage24.php?p=5
(5) http://www.thestatesmanonline.com/pages/news_detail.php?newsid=7505&section=1
(6) http://www.un.org/millenniumgoals/2008highlevel/pdf/newsroom/Goal%204%20FINAL.pdf

Ghanaian road safety

Road safety has been a big topic in the Ghanaian news lately. Part of the many people expressing opinions blame it on the disregard of drivers for the road regulations and the state of repair of their vehicles, while others point to the dismal state of the roads to explain, at least partly, the many accidents we seem to read about in the papers every day. I think both claims are perfectly valid.


On April 2, 2009, I mentioned, in a post elsewhere, a specific section of Spintex Road that was recently resurfaced with a handful of gravel and a drizzle of liquid tar:

There is a stretch on Nungua link (the part of 'Spintex' between Coca Cola and Nungua junction) where potholes are a permanent fixture. What's funny (not so funny) is that they are not always the same. Heavy vehicles come now and then, scrap the surface, pack it down and about 3 weeks ago even sprinkled gravel and sparingly poured what looked like liquid tarmac on the gravel. It lasted all of 3 days and we are back with holes getting bigger and bigger and the red soil showing through the 'tarmac' (who are you kidding? I assure you the whole resurfacing was not more than 1/3 of an inch deep). Navigating through and around potholes is an art that requires concentration and the shortest lapse can send you into the car coming from the other way. Not mentioning the reflex action of flooring it once you are back on a half decent surface.

We all have dozens of similar examples. Is it really a deliberate policy to resurface roads in this very "temporary" manner? Or is there a budget for a decent resurfacing and after everyone even remotely involved has taken what they consider their rightful share this was all what remained for the work proper?

Last week, this section was cordonned off and traffic was diverted to allow for more "improvement" works.


As you may know, we had our first rains of the season in Accra yesterday and guess what: yesterday, this section (cordons removed) was back to its previous bumpy unsurfaced state. I am sorry I didn't take pictures of "before" and "after" but will go today and keep taking pictures, say every week, to monitor the situation. I don't exactly know where to post them in order to alert whomever can really have an impact. Any suggestion is welcome.

Today, surprise: heavy vehicles at work, again. I would be enthousiastic if I hadn't seen them several times over the last 18 months with no lasting results.


On a more positive note, I found myself stranded in Aflao yesterday after night fall and had to join a big bus (50+ seats) to Accra. It took us 5 solid hours, via the Keta road (the more direct road via Akatsi being a 50km nightmare) and many road blocks. I was impressed at how prudently and safely the driver behaved and abode by road regulations. Good behaviour is not very newsworthy but I felt only fair to mention it.

The following gives me no reason to rejoice though: I'm sorry to report that the driver and mate seemed to have to give something at every single road block on the way.