Ghana’s attainment of sanitation MDG hangs in the balance – Report
With just two years to the deadline, Ghana’s efforts to achieve the Millennium Development Goal (MDG) on Sanitation hangs in the balance.
This is because only 13 per cent of the required 54 per cent target has been attained, as shown by a report by the Joint Monitoring Platform (JMP), a United Nation’s body.
Consequently, the Resource Centre Network has charged Environmental Health Officers of the Metropolitan and Municipal Assemblies to strictly enforce sanitation by-laws, in addition to the dissemination of behavioural change messages, to help reverse the situation.
Mr. Abu Wumbei, National Coordinator of the Network, made these known at the end of a two-day national dissemination workshop at Elmina on Thursday.
The event was to analyze two documents designed to promote behavioural change, and to encourage community participation in sanitation activities.
The workshop that was organized jointly by the Ministry of Water Resources, Works and Housing, and the Ministry of Local Government and Rural Development, was attended by technical staff of the various Municipal and Metropolitan Assemblies in the southern sector of the country.
Mr. Wumbei identified lack of effective monitoring and enforcement of sanitation laws as challenges militating against the success of the MDGs, and called on the Assemblies to address the problem.
He said that according to the JMP’s latest data, Ghana’s water coverage of 86 per cent, had exceeded the expected76 per cent.
Mr Wumbei called on Ghanaians to stop doing things the old ways, to move the country forward.
Mr. Ebenezer Kye-Mensah, Capacity Building Specialist of Global Communities, a facilitator of the workshop, expressed concern that many households were still without toilets.
He said that under the WASH programme, which was being supported by the United States Agency for International Development, 2,211 households in the Accra and Sekondi-Takoradi Metropolis were provided with latrines.
Mr Kye-Mensah explained that the behavioural change communication document has targeted ten priority behaviours that needed to be changed to ensure sustainable sanitation practices in urban communities.
He said they included the safe disposals of excreta and the promotion of hand washing with soap at five critical times.
Source: GNA