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What price clean water?

The third in a series of articles in which Hester Ross follows the progress of the Queen's Jubilee Baton through the Commonwealth and focuses on debt related issues encountered along the way.

Try this. Fill a bucket with water, balance it on your head and walk a couple of hundred yards along the road. Do this several times a day with your baby strapped on your back. Fun isn't it?

The Jubilee Baton arrives in Africa this week and everywhere the length of the continent the runners will pass women, invariably women, engaged in their arduous daily task of finding and carrying sufficient clean water for their families' needs. In urban Ghana the quest for water looks like becoming even more difficult as people are faced with the prospect of paying up to 50% of their already meagre incomes on water: water which may not even be safe to drink.

As part of the complex negotiations with Heavily Indebted Poor Countries (HIPCs) the World Bank and the IMF have been pressurizing the Ghanaian government to privatize its urban water systems. And they insist that citizens pay "the full market price" for the water they use. Foreign supply companies, one at least with a dubious track record, vie to secure the leases. (If you want a chillingly accurate if fictional account of the way foreign interests are accommodated in Africa, read John Le Carré's The Constant Gardener.)

If the proposals go ahead ordinary Ghanaians will have to make impossible choices. Educate children, pay for medicines or buy water? Where people simply can't pay, many women will have to walk further and further to find whatever free water they can. This will often be from polluted streams and rivers and precious children will inevitably die from waterborne diseases.

Unsurprisingly the 70% of Ghanaians who earn less than a dollar a day have, until now, had no say whatsoever in the discussions. However the poor are finding their voice and the National Coalition Against the Privatisation of Water (CAPofWATER) has been formed, drawing members from NGOs, Trades Unions, church and community groups. Everyone agrees that something has to be done about Ghana's water problems. CAPofWATER asks for a serious examination of all options for reform, including community run systems, which could provide affordable clean water.

Ask Jubilee Scotland to forward you the e-mail from CAPofWATER which puts forward their argument and details ways in which you can help. It also includes Christian Aid's full report on the issue.

Visit www.jubileescotland.org.uk for more on Scotland's debt campaign (or e-mail mail@jubileescotland.org.uk )

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