Group Appeals For Set Up Of Intensive Education On Sanitation

A baseline study on sanitation and hygiene has called for a paradigm shift from the construction of communal/public toilets to household ones.

The study was conducted by Intervention Forum (IF), a non-governmental organization, in the Awutu Senya District in the Central Region.

It highlighted the need to step up education on sanitation and hygiene as one of the key areas for the Awutu Senya District Assembly (ASDA) to focus on ameliorating the existing low access to improved household sanitary facilities within the district.

The calls stemmed from the study's findings, which identified most citizens (over 70%) as still harbouring the notion that it was the Assembly's responsibility to construct toilet facilities for them.

These and other recommendations followed the findings of the baseline study, which was undertaken to make available a reliable database on current levels of sanitation services within the Awutu Senya District.

It was also to facilitate interventions by decision-makers to identify issues around poor sanitation and draw key decision-makers, media and other key actors into dialogue on how best to solve the identified issues.

Mr. Isaac Owusu, a senior official of IF, presented the findings to the stakeholders at a district level interface meeting, organized by the IF, under the Voice for Change (V4C) programme. The V4C is an evidence-based advocacy programme being implemented by SNV (Netherlands Development Organisation), in partnership with the International Food and Policy Research Institute (IFPRI) and funded by the Dutch Ministry of Foreign Affairs (DGIS)), at Awutu Beraku, on Thursday.

The meeting was attended by officials from the Awutu Senya District Assembly (ASDA), including the Environmental Health Unit, Ghana Education Service, Ghana Health Service, Information Services Department, Community Development, Queenmothers, Area Council and Unit Committee members.

''There is the need for the Assembly to conduct sensitizations on the national policy paradigm shift from the construction of communal/public toilets to household toilets.

This is because a substantial number of citizens are still waiting and looking up to the Assembly to construct toilets for them. 'Citizens must be educated on this change in policy direction so that they can act now to address their situation,' he indicated.

Mr Owusu also advocated a concerted push by the Assembly towards Community-Led Total Sanitation (CLTS) implementation, saying that, it needed to consider ceding revenue to modelling CLTS in selected communities within the district.

Specific areas covered by the survey included time spent in fetching water, statistics on public toilet usage, practice of open defecation (OD), mode of waste water and solid waste disposal, and citizens' access to sanitation and hygiene messages.

Other areas covered citizens' assessment of performance of waste management companies, hand hygiene practices, and household hygiene and sanitation management practices, among others.

According to the survey, 54.3 per cent of female public toilet facility users admitted to challenges such as lack of privacy (45.7%) and high risk of contracting diseases (17.1%).

The study again outlined that 11.4 per cent of respondents cited as a challenge the constant fear of using the toilet facility at night due to such places being too dark.

With regard to the practice of Open Defecation (OD), approximately 24.2 per cent admitted to practicing OD as against the country's overall rate of 19 per cent, indicating that, the Assembly needed to step up its efforts towards curbing OD as it was a critical SDG target.

On waste disposal, the study indicated that 8.1 of surveyed households disposed of the waste of their children under-5 years into gutters, bushes or streets, with 40.6 per cent disposing them on public dumpsites or into public waste containers.

Most practitioners of OD said they resorted to it because they had no functional in-house toilets (42.9%) or their existing toilets were not hygienic (30.6%).

While 93.2 per cent of these households saw OD as being wrong, they still practiced it because they had no other option.

The study again cited peculiar challenges faced by female OD practitioners, with 47.4 per cent citing challenges such as defecation areas being too exposed, fear of being sexually offended in bushes or defecation areas (23.7%) and fear of using defecation areas at night (13.2%).

The study also indicated that 76 per cent of surveyed households said their toilet disposal situation needed improvement.

With regard to citizens' knowledge of correlation between OD/indiscriminate waste disposal and flooding, 76.3 per cent of respondents indicated that they saw no correlation between open defecation and/or indiscriminate waste disposal and instances of flooding within their communities.

'From these assessments, it can be safely affirmed that climate change education ought to be integrated into the information, education and communication (IEC) focus of the Assembly's hygiene education efforts,'' the study stated.

This can then use the results/outcomes as basis to lobby other targeted NGOs, banks and micro-financial institutions and private entities to come in with support.

Mr Owusu suggested that pragmatic steps be taken by the Assembly to engage microfinance institutions (MFIs), local banks and other private sector players on the prospects of branching into sanitation and hygiene service delivery and Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) initiatives.

''The adequate resourcing of the Environmental Health and Sanitation Unit of the Assembly should be accorded priority, given how consequential its day-to-day activities are, in ensuring that improved outcomes in the WASH sector are secured,'' he stated.

Again, the Assembly was asked to continue in its current direction of gazetting its bye-laws to ensure their greater sanitation enforcement, and that extensive education must be carried out on it following its completion to improve awareness of citizens on them.

The sanitation and hygiene bye-laws also needed to be enforced without fear or favour to ensure that punitive measures taken served as a deterrent to others.

Mr Owusu again said that consideration ought to be given to the resourcing and periodic capacity strengthening of Area councils and the active involvement of Unit Committee members in sanitation and hygiene development processes.

This, he pointed out, would ensure their ability to better perform their roles to aid improved sanitation and hygiene management.