The Balancing Act: Using The Media To Fight Corruption In The Water Sector

A famous English-American poet, W.H. Auden once wrote that “thousands have lived without love but not without water”. Clean and reliable water is necessary for the daily survival of communities and for industrial, agricultural and energy purposes.

This very vital resource has come under pressure in recent times largely because of natural and man-made factors including climate change and corruption.

Growing crisis
Lack of access to safe drinking water and sanitation is the cause of various health problems in many parts of the developing world – water is therefore vital to address many of the global challenges including malnutrition, poverty reduction and sustainable resource management. Indeed, Goal 6 of the United Nations (UN) Sustainable Development Goals (SDGS) clearly states that access to safe water and sanitation and sound management of freshwater ecosystems are essential to human health and to environmental sustainability and economic prosperity.

However, accessible and high-quality freshwater is a limited and highly variable resource. The Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development’s (OECD) projections show that water demand will rise by 55% by 2050; and, by the same year, 240 million people are expected to remain without access to clean water, and 1.4 billion without access to basic sanitation. Water access is therefore the biggest problem for most parts of sub-Saharan Africa and the UN estimates that water shortages is a potential killer to the economic development of the continent.

In Ghana, like most African countries, water service delivery is assigned to a single water authority and the abilities of the water agencies to deliver water adequately, especially to urban areas, have been negatively affected by many factors. First, urbanization is taking place at an unprecedented rate and the urban water systems are characterized by heavy financial losses and face key good governance tests including corruption.

“Dirty” Deals
Corruption in the water sector takes many forms; from massive misappropriations of huge sums of money to illegal connections and consumption of water. An influential study carried out by the Ghana Integrity Initiative (GII) in 2011, the “Ghana National Integrity Water Supply Integrity Study” found that in circumstances where good governance mechanisms such as transparency and accountability are missing, basic services such as water is at risk in terms of quality, affordability and access.

In 2000, the World Bank and the Department for International Development (DFiD) respectively cancelled a USD 100 million and USD 30 million water projects in Ghana because of massive corruption that was detected. In June 2002, the privately-owned Ghanaian Chronicle newspaper reported the loss of USD 600,000 by the Ghana Water Company Limited (GWCL) due to illegal connections and consumption of water. In 2017, Citifmonline reported that a USD 150 million World Bank project known as the Greater Accra Metropolitan Area (GAMA) Project meant to improve the water and sanitation situation in the Accra Tema Metropolitan Area was not progressing, among other reasons, questionable procurement practices.

The Water Integrity Global Outlook in 2016 published by the Water Integrity Network (WIN) has also highlighted repeated scandals in some sub-Saharan African countries to illustrate the endemic nature of the water sector corruption. For instance, in Benin, € 4 million of Dutch funding vanished from the Ministry of Water in 2015; In Malawi, a reformed public financial management (PFM) system was misused to divert US$ 55 million from public funds to the private accounts of officials.

Whilst corruption in the water sector varies between different countries it is estimated that about 20% to 40% of total water sector investment worldwide is lost to financial dishonesty and impropriety - corruption is therefore a key feature of the governance crisis in water.

Taking action
Tackling the problem of corruption in the water sector requires, among others, effective reforms by politicians and policy makers and, to a large extent, advocacy efforts by the media. According to the World Bank, the media are crucial in creating and maintaining an atmosphere in public life that discourages fraud and eliminates systemic corruption in public institutions.

In order to fight corruption in the water sector, there is the need for people to recognize that corrupt practices exist. The Ghanaian media have an important role to play by bringing issues of corruption to the attention of civil society, the public and policy makers, to ensure action is taken through policy or advocacy. In very specific terms, the media can act as a force to tackle the problem of corruption in both tangible and intangible ways. In tangible ways, consistent and sustained media reportage of a corruption issue can lead to the launching of investigations by authorities, scrapping of a law, impeachment or forced resignation of corrupt officials or launching of judicial proceedings and even public demonstrations to put pressure on government or an institution to act.

Alternatively, the media can heighten the sense of accountability among officials, the public and institutions through constant hard-hitting news reportage. One interesting example of a tangible way of tackling corruption is the case of judicial corruption in Ghana in 2015 – where an investigative journalist, AnasAmeryawAnas carried out an investigation of corrupt judges within Ghana’s judiciary, which subsequently led to the dismissal of some judges.

However since corruption is a sensitive topic, there are limitations as to how effective the media is in advocating for less corruption in the water sector. Firstly, ownership of the media can play a role here. Whether media is independent or state-owned influences the extent to which they can be critical about the level of corruption in state institutions. The state media tends to be less critical of state institutions whilst the private media will likely be more critical.

Secondly, the amount of resources available to journalists may influence how well the media is able to act as a watchdog. Finally, the rise of the internet and the ease of posting articles online has made it difficult to assess which reports are accurate or reliable.

While the actual correlation between the media’s role in fighting corruption is quite strong, little is known of how it actually works. The underlying assumption underpinning this relationship assumes that the news media’s ability to set an agenda informs the public and leads to civil society action leading to improved transparency and accountability.

The Writer is the Communication Officer at the Ghana Anti-Corruption Coalition (GACC) Email: [email protected]