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The Minister of Water Resources, Works and Housing, Alhaji Collins Dauda, has charged engineers of Ghana Water Company Limited (GWCL), as a matter of urgency, to fix one of the filter beds for use, while they go through the normal process to get a contractor to reconstruct the remaining three. Such an approach, he explained, would result in the provision of at least seven million gallons of water out of the 10 million shortfall, due to the defects in four of the 12 filter beds. After touring the Weija Water Treatment Plant to ascertain the nature of the problem and interacting with engineers of the facility on Saturday, the minister told journalists the situation was not as �alarming� as was portrayed initially by some officials of the company. However, he charged them to work towards reducing the impact of the problem on consumers, while they sought a long- term solution. Last week, Ghana Urban Water Limited (GUWL) announced that following the detection of cracks and other structural defects in four of its 12 filter beds, it would ration water for the next six months. The defect, according to the Communications Manager at the GUWL, Mr Stanley Martey, required a complete redesigning and reconstruction of the four filter beds; an exercise which would take about six months to complete. The defects had given rise to a shortage of 20 per cent of water production, representing 10 million gallons of water produced daily. The damage to the filter beds is now being assessed by consultants of the GWCL and specialist contractors in water treatment plant design and construction. Water filters remove impurities from water by means of the creation of a fine physical barrier, a chemical or biological process. Alhaji Dauda explained that those areas whose normal supply was seven days a week would have to contend with five days of supply, while residents of areas such as Roman Ridge which used to have their taps following for three days of the week would now have water for two days a week. In the long term, he said, after the assessment by the consultants, the company would use the two-stage procurement process to select the contractor. First, it would identify some companies and ask for proposals by the end of February after which the best contractor for the job would be selected. Asked when the work would be completed, the minister told journalists: �I don�t want to commit myself to any specific date. We are working to fix the problem in the shortest possible time.� He stated that left to him alone, he would have selected a contractor that day to start and complete the work in the shortest possible time, �but you are the same people who will blame me for not following due process and accuse me of corruption�. On Wednesday, alarmed by the GUWL�s proposed six-month water rationing, the Public Utility Regulatory Commission (PURC) asked the Ghana Water Company (GWC) to furnish it with all the details of the company�s planned rehabilitation of the Weija Water Treatment Plant by February 1, 2013. The PURC, as part of its obligation to protect the interest of consumers, made the demand to enable it monitor and also ensure that such rehabilitation works did not adversely affect consumers. A member of the commission, Mr Alex Bonney, made the demand during a tour of the Weija Water Treatment Plant, and expressed surprise that the company could talk of rationing water to some parts of the country without any recourse to the commission.