In 2000, the Integrated Social Development Center, ISODEC, initiated a research which aimed at promoting national development alternatives principally in Ghana and to some extent in the West African sub region. Referred to as the Rights-Based Advocacy Programme (RBA), the programme sought to confront the neoliberal policy measures promoted largely by the international donor community. By this, ISODEC sought to alert government and other supporting bodies to the disadvantages of accepting the policies, like water privatization or the EPA policies of the International Monetary Fund or the European Union respectively. In the view of ISODEC, it is the right of government to provide some essential services, like health, water and education to the people. It is not the role of citizens to totally pay for these services. It is in the light of this that the national coalition against the privatization of water, NCAP was birthed.

GHANA NATIONAL COALITION AGAINST THE PRIVATISATION OF WATER (CAP OF WATER)

Introducing CAP of Water

The Coalition Against Privatisation of Water (CAP of Water) evolved out of a 4-day national forum on water sector reform in Ghana, organized in May 2001, by the Integrated Social Development Centre (ISODEC). It is a broad based coalition of individuals and civil society organizations, such as trade unions, gender rights groups, students, residents and community associations, religious bodies and service delivery / advocacy non-governmental organizations, united around five (5) succinct objectives:
  1. A mass civil society campaign of public debate, education and mobilization to stop the transfer of water supply to foreign multinational monopoly control.
  2. Direct mass involvement in decisions about water sector reform alternatives.
  3. The inclusion of a public sector option in water supply and the overall restructuring of the water sector. The public sector option must be drawn up by Ghana Water Company Limited, the existing public sector supplier, and its details should be publicized and made available for independent verification.
  4. Full public disclosure of all documents and details of transaction proposals, bids and negotiations involving all parties involved in the so-called Public-Private-Partnership.
  5. Access to water for all Ghanaians, backed by a statutory right to water by 2008.
The coalition, which is growing in numbers, has seen almost all the opposition parties in the country pledging support for its concerns. Several thousands of individuals and civil society organizations have signed up to the coalition's declaration and pledged support for its course. The Trade Union Congress of Ghana, is presently the coalition's convener, with representatives of Consultative Labour Council, National Union of Ghana Students, Christian Council of Ghana, Third World Network, African Trade Network serving on its national coordinating committee. CAP of Water is not relenting in its efforts at freeing the water sector from the siege of IMF and the World Bank, who have made donor funding for the utilities contingent on privatization, and for that matter commercialization. The mass signature campaign initiated at the beginning of this campaign is still on-going, community and work place mobilization and education are being carried out actively. Support is required to publish and disseminate research reports on alternative approaches to managing water in Ghana, mass information on the implications and the dangers of subjecting a public good to the rules of the free market.