Upper East Regional Environment and Sanitation Unit calls for help

The planned agenda of the Upper East Regional Environment and Sanitation Unit to improve public health and environmental standards in the region has been bedevilled with challenges, Mr. Charles Yimbil Awuni, the Deputy Upper East Regional Environmental and Sanitation Officer, has disclosed.

Mr. Awuni stressed that the poor management of liquid and solid waste, along with weak enforcement by district assemblies, continues to hinder progress. Sanitation by-laws continue to affect the progress of achieving public health and environmental goals.

He said the Upper East Region suffered some setbacks that impinged on some gains made in achieving public health standards in the region, including delays with efforts by the district assemblies to replace sanitation workers, especially sweepers, after Zoomlion Ghana's contract was stalled in continuing to handle waste management.

Mr. Awuni said this in an interview with the Upper East Regional Chapter of the Media Coalition Against Open Defecation (M-CODe) as part of a general discussion on Metropolitan, Municipal, and District Assemblies' (MMDAs) Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) on environment and sanitation.

Following President John Dramani Mahama’s directive, the Media Coalition Against Open Defecation (M-CODe), with support from World Vision Ghana, has initiated a nationwide accountability activation to track how Metropolitan, Municipal, and District Chief Executives (MMDCEs) are delivering on the government's new directive.

Under the theme "Institutionalising Sanitation Performance," the exercise marks the first phase of M-CODE’s revitalization agenda and positions the media as the accountability bridge between government, traditional authorities, local assemblies, and citizens in the push to achieve a clean environment and end open defecation.

The first phase of the projects covers Upper East, Northern, Western, Greater Accra, Upper West, and Ashanti.

Mr. Awuni said communal containers and disposal sites were left unattended to, hence affecting the speed at which the region expected to achieve its goal on sanitation.'

"The National Sanitation Day cleanup exercise came to help but was unable to solve the problem; street sweeping is a routine thing, and we cannot wait or refuse, or else it will pile up."

He noted that the fight against open defecation in the region, which was a sponsored programme from an external partnership for assemblies to handle sustainability aspects to end open defecation, had stalled since the funding stopped, coupled with financial challenges of the assemblies leading to most communities that reached open defecation-free status to relapse.

'The relapse is so massive that we cannot even mention the names of those communities,' Mr. Awuni said.

He, however, assured that with the current 10 percent of government common fund allocation to the district assemblies for sanitation, which will also cover the infrastructure component, software component, behaviour change and enforcement component on sanitation, the assemblies will help speed up the interventions to increase the environment and sanitation goals.

Meanwhile, Mr. Yaw Attah Arhin, World Vision Ghana WASH Technical Specialist, explained that the M-CODe media-led accountability week ensures that commitments translate into measurable results for the most vulnerable communities.

He reiterated a call on all chiefs, queen mothers, and opinion leaders across the country to mobilize their communities to participate in monitoring exercises, community clean-ups, and interface meetings with district authorities.

He also anchored the M-CODe campaign in the Sustainable Development Goals, particularly SDG 6 on Clean Water and Sanitation and SDG 11 on Sustainable Cities and Communities.

“Ghana committed to SDG 6: to ensure availability and sustainable management of water and sanitation for all by 2030. We cannot meet that target if our districts are not accountable every year, every quarter, every week,” Mr. Attah Arhin stressed.

Mr. Francis Ameyibor, M-CODe National Convenor, explained that the goal is not to witch-hunt but to create transparency, adding that when citizens and traditional leaders track performance together, MMDCEs are more likely to deliver.

He further encouraged traditional councils across the country to establish a Sanitation Monitoring Committee that will meet monthly with the municipal assembly to review progress and map out strategies to deal with sanitation issues.

The intervention seeks to position the media as the accountability bridge among government, traditional authorities, local assemblies, and citizens across the country, with a sharp focus on ending open defecation (OD), Mr Ameyibor explained.

Mr. Ameyibor explained that now that sanitation is a KPI, the focus shifts from just talking about it to making sure it happens, and the media's job, as outlined by M-CODe, is to make sure that budgets are actually used, that laws are enforced, and that local leaders are actively doing their jobs.

He therefore appealed to state and non-state actors, development partners, media outlets, traditional and religious leaders, environmental service providers, and the general public to support M-CODe with funds and logistics to ensure the project's success in the best interests of everyone living in Ghana.

   Comments0