Meet Anthony
Building universal services is a complex task. Citizens must be motivated to pay for water and become empowered consumers. District leadership plays a vital role in enhancing services in the Asutifi North District of the Ahafo region in Ghana. District Chief Executive Anthony Mensah encourages the combined talents of everyone and makes sure all work towards a clear plan.
"I’m Anthony Mensah. I have lived in Kenyasi, the capital town of Asutifi North District ever since I was born. I was trained to be a professional teacher. In 2017 I got the opportunity to serve the district as the District Chief Executive. In this, I’m the representative of the President and the political and administrative head of the District Assembly.
I sometimes joke and tell people that it's kind of tedious work. Everyday, everybody around me, wants to talk to me. You get up and start to answer WhatsApp messages. People will be calling me for varied reasons. At some point someone will call you and insult you about a challenge that has not been resolved or a problem that he has seen somewhere. You see a WhatsApp message, a video recording, an audio recording that is damaging you, because of an activity you are expected? to do that has not been done. Right now, as we sit here talking, people are waiting for me. I have intentionally left my phone somewhere. If I get my phone, I must return the missed calls, various missed calls that have come. That's part of the job.
Our job is totally different from being a pastor, or a leader of a church. You go to church on Sundays, after church, you go home, the next Sunday, you go to church. If you are a politician, you have given yourself to them to always?scrutinise you, but you need to stand firm and focus on the good things and then provide for them.
Listening to the people, is what I do. I told myself, if I get this opportunity, I must work towards achieving the objectives. So, you must have patience and time for everybody.
Multiple challenges - Water the priority
So, if you talk about the district, we have various sectors that we need to bring development to. We need health, education and water and sanitation and hygiene services, roads, security and economic development. You put all of these things together and it becomes the objective the District Assembly has to work towards.
If you look at the number of challenges that we have as a district, each of them is very important. But for me, I attach more importance to water and sanitation and hygiene services. Water is life, you see. Children and women, they need more water than anybody. So, I have tried to make sure that water is there for the people. And not just that, we look at how we try and sustain the water facility.
When I came to office, water and sanitation was a very big challenge. We decided to organise stakeholder engagements to decide jointly on what to do. The Assembly was lucky to have the opportunity to be joined by [development] partners: Safe Water Network, Aquaya Institute, IRC, Netcentric [Campaigns], World Vision International, CDC [Centers for Disease Control and Prevention], PATH and the Conrad N. Hilton Foundation. We came together and decided to come out with a master plan. A plan that helps us to understand the issues and to know what to do. The plan is linking up to Sustainable Development Goal 6. That means that by the year 2030, we want to ensure that no one will be left behind when it comes to water, sanitation and hygiene services.
The master plan process was started with IRC, and then all the partners joined. We were lucky to have the opportunity to get funding from Conrad N. Hilton Foundation and World Vision to hit the ground. And that’s what we did, in 2019, we started hitting the ground.
On how we work, we’re making sure that the traditional authorities and the community itself are part of it. Everybody is involved. This is to make sure that we all become responsible for the drinking water facilities.
As an Assembly, we decided to enter into a Memorandum of Understanding between the Assembly and the Community, a contract. It was very hard. Even though we all want water, we can’t give it for free. We needed to make the people understand that you are not paying for the water. You are paying for the services, so that the system can be sustained.
In 2017, when we came to power, the percentage of water access within the district was at 41%. Today, I can tell you that we are almost getting close to achieving 100%. We have about 90% coverage of water within the district. Every facility within the district is being manned by water management teams that take care of it. They make sure the facilities that we have provided for the community are being sustained.
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The secret behind the whole thing is that we are working with technocrats, people from local government service, the Coordinating Director, the Planning Officer. You give them the opportunity. You provide them with the resources to work for you. I always allow the technocrats to work. I didn't do the master plan. It is the technocrats that did it, with the support of the various partners. I got people that matter, that can help me do it.
We have to make sure people understand their jobs, and are being accountable to them, especially when it comes to the money that they all know the source where it is coming from. It is not the pocket money of the District Chief that is being used. It is public funds.
Someone [The President] appointed me to be here, to represent him, to work, to have development for the people. The work has been decentralized to us here. So, I am here to make sure that proper development is being given to the people and that's what we are doing.
They're good. We're a good team."
Asutifi North district and the Safe Water Initiative
Asutifi North district, is one of the districts that is supported under the?Conrad N. Hilton Safe Water Initiative. This initiative?focuses on systems strengthening and service delivery to ensure reliable and safely managed water to one million people in low-income households, health facilities and schools in Ghana, Ethiopia and Uganda.
As part of its five-year strategic plan, Conrad N. Hilton commissioned a review of its investments and approaches in the target geographies. The primary aim of the review was to investigate the relevance, effectiveness and sustainability of different Service Delivery Models (SDM), including community-based safe water management, publicly owned water utilities and private-sector approaches such as Safe Water Enterprises (SWE).
In 2023, as part of the review IRC produced on behalf of Aguaconsult Ltd and for the Conrad N. Hilton Foundation the film 'In service to everyone'. For this film, IRC's?Dechan Dalrymple and Abubakari Wumbei, interviewed Anthony Mensah in August 2023. This article is an adaptation and summarised version of the full interview.
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