Mr Wisdom Aditsey, the Metropolitan Environmental Health Officer (MEHO) at the Tema Metropolitan Assembly, has cited increasing urban migration and squatter settlements, as major challenges the Environmental Health Directorate faces in curbing Open Defecation (OD). Mr Aditsey said because these squatters only dwell in temporal structures, they have no access to permanent toilet facilities and had to engage in open defecation around their location. ‘This is a major problem that most metropolitan, municipal, and district health officers are facing.’ Additionally, that the proliferation of makeshift or slums in otherwise residential, industrial, and commercial centres were also contributing to the challenge of open defecation, he said. Mr Aditsey, expressed these concerns during the Media Coalition Against Open Defecation (M-CODe) National Working Group Empowerment Summit in Accra, which was sponsored by World Vision Ghana. The Summit formed part of the ‘M-CODe 2023 Anti-Open Defecation Nationwide Advocacy efforts. The Coalition is currently building alliances with strategic stakeholders, including the Regional Coordinating Council, Environmental Health Department, Ghana Education Service, Ghana Health Service, Community Water and Sanitation Agency, and the Department of Community Development, to revitalise advocacy against the menace. Other stakeholders included the Department of Gender, the National Commission for Civic Education, Regional Environmental Officers, the Environmental Protection Agency, World Vision, and civil society organisations. Mr Aditsey said the metropolis had inadequate surveillance mechanisms and inadequate capacity for the Environmental Health Unit (EHU) to enforce the laws against open defecation. ‘Before you enforce the law, you must necessarily arrest someone who is practicing open defecation, and the unit has difficulties in arresting them as we need to collaborate with the police, which is sometimes difficult,’ he said. Mr Aditsey indicated that the Environmental Health Directorate’s major challenge was the inertia of security collaboration and the lack of logistics for monitoring the development of squatter settlements in the metropolis. He said sanitation was a shared responsibility; therefore, to end open defecation across the country, the unit needed the support of the police and other security agencies, in arresting the perpetrators. The EHU he said, does a lot of sensitisation and education, and appealed to household owners and landlords to ensure the provision of toilets facilities in their homes, before giving out such spaces to tenants, to avoid breaching the sanitation laws. ‘Sensitisation and education are important for individuals, but the idea of ending open defecation will solve a lot of health and community problems in the metropolis,’ he said. Mr Francis Ameyibor, the National Convenor, M-CODe, said empowerment through capacity building, connecting key players in the battle against open defecation and developing a forum to expose communities still engaging in the practice, were important efforts being pursued nationwide to end the problem. He mentioned that the public awareness campaign towards achieving the global aim of eliminating OD by 2030, required the empowerment of media, who served as important partners in revitalising these efforts the locally. Mr Yaw Attah Arhin, the World Vision Ghana Water, Sanitation and Hygiene (WASH) Technical Specialist, who opened the M-CODe National Working Group Empowerment Summit, stressed the need for stakeholders to work together towards the objective of ending open defecation by 2030.
Source: Ghana News Agency
