Civil society groups and Non-governmental organizations are calling on government and all stakeholders to renew their commitments and efforts to completely end open defecation in Ghana.
They made the call on the occasion of World Toilet Day.
According to statistics, over 4.5 billion people out of a total world population of 7.2 billion, do not have access to safe latrines. This means that out of 100 people, 63 of them do not have access to safe latrines.
In Ghana, there has been little improvement in ending open defecation, as open defecation reduced marginally from 22 percent in the year 2000, to 19 percent at the end of the Millennium Development Goals MDG’s in 2015.
In an interview with Citi News at Vanderpuye, a farming community in the Atewa District to commemorate the World Toilet Day, the Executive Director of the Centre For Development Partnership and Innovation (CDPI), John Nedoh, called on government to target landlords and also empower chiefss to help end open defecation.
“I think the government is doing quite well, but I believe government should constantly re-access the strategies being used because from the little research we have done, we noticed landlords and households are not being targeted enough on the whole campaign of making every house get its own latrine because we can do everything possible, but if a landlord is not sensitized or triggered to own a latrine so that he can sensitize members of his household to use the latrines, then there is so much that the government can do”.
” I will say that the campaign against open defecation is not necessarily a problem of money, but it is a problem of targeting, how well are we targeting landlords, how well are chiefs holding landlords or heads of households who do not have latrines accountable”.
Mr. John Nedoh added, “With the project we are doing, all those requesting for latrines are not tenants but landlords. So I believe if we really want to end open defecation as a country then our targets should be the landlords and heads of households, to hold them accountable and make sure they construct latrines before renting out their homes. Our chiefs should also see latrines as they see other communal activities. If the area is bushy or filthy our chiefs are able to organize the residents to clear or clean the mess, but chiefs are not seeing the absence of latrines in their communities as a problem, so we need to sensitize and empower chiefs to add latrines to their list of priorities”.
Faecal related diseases killing more children
Mr John Nedoh also made a passionate appeal to government to exhaust all avenues to help end open defecation in the country within the shortest possible time.
According to him, the huge number of deaths recorded yearly among children in relation to faecal related diseases does not speak well of a country like Ghana.
“It is very worrying because children under 5 years who are the vulnerable do not have the resistance to a lot of these diseases, so whiles adults can be affected by faecal diseases such as diarrhoea and will not die, children under 5 years will easily die, and there are statistics to show that millions of children die every year due to diarrhoea and the reasons are that we are not managing and disposition off feaces well or we are essentially eating our feaces and this contributes significantly to the cost incurred by adults for treating themselves”.
“So a day like this is set aside to make sure that public health is improved because once we have latrines and we are using it well, children will not suffer infections from feacal related diseases”.
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By: Neil Nii Amatey Kanarku | citinewsroom.com | niikanarku@gmail.com