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Centre For Leadership And Research Welcomes The Creation Of Ministry Of Water And Sanitation

By Centre For Leadership And Research
Press Release Centre For Leadership And Research Welcomes The Creation Of Ministry Of Water And Sanitation
JAN 12, 2017 LISTEN

The Centre for Leadership and Research welcomes the creation of the Ministry of Water and Sanitation. The challenges to good sanitary conditions in Ghana are enormous. It will be recalled that the immediate past National Democratic Congress government led by President John Mahama introduced a National Sanitation Day Programme (a monthly clean-up exercise) to improve the sanitary conditions of Ghana.

Despite the introduction of this initiative, Ghanaians are still confronted with challenges to good sanitary conditions. Governments have a duty to find sustainable solutions to the problems of the citizenry including sanitation problems, and if the Nana Akufo Addo led government sees the urgent need to create a ministry to deal with this societal canker, we at the Centre for Leadership and Research welcome it.

We do believe that the mandate of this proposed ministry would go beyond mere collection of garbage on our streets to promotion of personal and environmental hygiene, siltation of waterways, proper disposal of sewage, to recycling of waste materials and the use of sludge for the production of biogas and electricity for households, institutions and industries.

We wish to bring the attention of the minister to the following critical issues:

1. There must be a strong institutional arrangements to guide sanitation and waste management in Ghana. This is because even though waste management has seen private involvement, the outcomes are not encouraging.

2. There is the need to review the management and contract processes and clearly define the roles of all partners involved in waste management.

3. Monitoring and sanctioning of performance must not be compromised. This will help in compliance and improve sanitary conditions.

4. The ministry should look for investors to invest in recycling. Currently most of our dumping sites do not have recycling plants.

5. Concentrate much effort on education and creation of awareness about the usefulness of faecal matter. This will not only help reduce open defecations but also reduce the demand for Liquefied Petroleum Gas - thus indirectly solving dumsor problems.

6. Build close drains. There must be a conscious effort to move away from open drains to close ones. In that we cannot operate open drains which allow people to use drains as their dumping grounds. When drains are choked, water movement in drains become difficult hence causing floods.

6. Focus on investing in UN approved G-SAP water facilities to help promote good sanitary conditions, sustainable use of water and help rural farmers as well. Focus should also be on toilet conversion plants rather than the installation of toilet treatment plants. This is because while the later only uses resources to waste the free raw material (toilet), the former uses same resources to produce useful energy (gas/electricity) - ensuring energy security.

The Centre for Leadership and Research believes that, the creation of this ministry will bring improvement in the reduction of the perennial flooding that claim many lives in Ghana, reduction of preventable diseases such as malaria, cholera, typhoid etc, reduction in air and water pollutions, and the relatively low costs involved in the production of biogas and electricity from human excreta and thus welcome its creation.

In all these, CLaR believes that a concrete action especially for children and young people should be key.

Thank you.
Long live CLaR
Long live Ghana
Richmond Yeboah
(Executive Director, CLar)
0202320671
K. Osei-Marfo
(Head, Security -CLaR)
0244614232 / 0200911311
Clement Abaidoo
(Head, Environment, CLaR)
0243001234

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