The Ghana Statistical Service, GSS has revealed, 77.7 percent districts in total did not benefit from government’s free water policy meant to mitigate the impact of coronavirus.
For subsidized electricity, 25% of localities did not enjoy the government social intervention.
For electricity, this is because these localities were not connected to the national grid, and for water, because localities relied on other alternative sources of water and were not served by the Ghana Water Company Limited (GWCL).
This was contained in a Local Economies Tracker by the GSS in collaboration with the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP).
This was conducted using a sample of 2,770 communities across the 16 regions of the country.
Out of the total number of localities surveyed: 554 of them are in districts that were in lockdown areas; 1,169 were in districts that share international borders with other countries (border districts), and 1,047 were neither in lockdown nor border districts (other districts).
It was undertaken from May to June 2020 and data was collected from key opinion leaders to understand the effect of COVID-19 on the local economy, particularly in localities in border districts, lockdown and non-lock down areas.
His comments come after President Akufo-Addo announced that government had absorbed the water bills of all Ghanaians for the next three months over the coronavirus outbreak in the country.
With regular handwashing a key preventive measure against the infection, President Nana Akufo-Addo announced a free water programme in April.
Government absorbed water and electricity bills for consumers from March, April, and May.
