Environmental Health Officer advocates Sanitation Court for Municipal Assembly
Mr Sampson Quaye Agbavitor, Environmental Health Officer at Kasoa – Adam Nana Zonal Council, has advocated the operationalisation of a Sanitation Court, within the Awutu Senya East Municipal Assembly (ASEMA)
He noted that this would help deal with sanitation offenders in a bid to enhance waste management.
He pointed out that due to the high number of criminal cases at the courts, much attention was not being paid to sanitation related cases.
Mr Agbavitor said this in his presentation at a private sector engagement forum in Kasoa in the Central Region.
The event, was hosted by Intervention Forum (IF) under the Voice 4 Change Programme (V4CP) of the SNV Nertherlands Development Organisation.
The aim of the project is to strengthen the capacities of local civil society organisations to generate reliable and relevant data, in order to carry out evidence –based advocacy for sustainable improvements, in key focus areas like renewable energy, Water, Sanitation and Hygiene (WASH) services and improved policy implementation at the municipal level.
The forum therefore, provided opportunity for discussions on the current sanitation situation within the Municipality and critical areas, where private sector participation and support was required.
Mr Agbavitor said among the current interventions to address issues were the 2018 gazetted ASEMA bye-law, which increased the minimum fine rate from GHC480 to GHC1,200 and maximum GHC3,000.
He said environmental health officers were intensifying on hygiene education, in an effort to urge individual households to construct household latrine in their homes.
Mr Agbavitor stated that ASEMA’s new bye-law also had provisions for people and agencies to give loans to individuals to construct latrines in their houses.
Madam Nora Ollennu, Chief Executive Officer of IF, noted that since the era of the Millennium Development Goals, the private sector was expected to play a critical role in addressing sanitation challenges.
She said nonetheless, its participation in the delivery of WASH services were limited so far, especially in low-income areas. This, she said was a major bane to the achievement of key development targets at various levels.
The V4CP is a five-year advocacy programme being funded by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Netherlands and implemented by SNV in partnership with the International Food and Research Institute (IFPRI) in Ghana and across several other developing countries.
The project is targeting an array of actors including; ASEMA, Traditional Authorities, Waste Management Companies, Microfinance institutions and Banks, Community-Based Organisations, Communities, Assembly Members, the Media, and all relevant actors whose involvement are key to the realisation of the project objectives.
Intervention Forum is one of the four local implementing partner Civil Society Organisations (CSOs) under the WASH component and was tasked to implement the project in ASEMA.
Source: GNA