Stakeholders in the sanitation sector in Northern region have disclosed that there has been a tremendous improvement in sanitation measures since the implementation of the citywide sanitation plan some three years ago.
According to Richard Ntibrey Agbo, WASH project manager at the Catholic Relief Services, though the region is not where it intends to be currently when it comes to WASH issues, there has been some progress.
He states that open defecation in the region used to hover above 30% but currently, as it stands, it is around 26%, which means the reduction is taking place gradually.
“The good thing is that we’re making progress, we are gradually reducing open defections, that is big for us. we are gradually getting vacuum truck operators to agree that our actions have impact on the environment, how do we ensure we’re coordinated”
“We wish we could have moved faster, but we will take the gradual progress and continue to work on it and see where we will get to”.
On the contributory factors, Mr. Agbo outlined behavior issues, law enforcement and lack of accessibility to the appropriate facilities causing the current sanitation situation to be as it is.
On her part, Alhassan Sumaya, Metropolitan Environmental Health Officer at the Tamale Metropolitan Assembly also disclosed the drastic increase in household toilet construction with about 18,000 people taking up the initiative.
She notes that lack of portable water especially during dry season is a limiting factor in achieving success in WASH related activities.
According to her, the close to 89,000 households in the Tamale area, there is still an outstanding figure of 24,000 without household toilets making it difficult to celebrate the success achieved so far.
On refuse management, Madam Sumaya reveals the lacks refuse containers and machinery is a problem, which the assembly is working to make available.
“ if we give 80% of sanitation management to the private sector to manage, the assembly should be able to manage the remaining 20%” “But for lack of the required machinery, we still have a lot of refuse around that are left unattended to “.
They made this known at a meeting on the implementation of the Citywide Inclusive Sanitation Plan for Tamale, which forms part of a series of planned meetings to bring together key stakeholders in the sanitation sub-sector in Tamale to track the progress being made to deliver safely managed WASH services to residents of Tamale.
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