NGO joins national efforts in good sanitation

Accra, May 27, GNA - The Safe Child Ghana, a non-governmental organisation (NGO) has joined the national efforts to achieve good environmental sanitation to reduce diseases.

In this light, the NGO has initiated Water, Access, Sanitation and Hygiene (WASH) boardroom game to inculcate hand washing with soap, value for healthy living, and environmental sanitation behavioural change among children to protect and promote child development.

Mrs Eunice Gifty Baabu, the Chief Executive Officer of the Safe Child Ghana, made this known to the Ghana News Agency at the launch of the WASH game in Accra.

The introduction of the game by the NGO is to partner the Greater Accra Metropolitan Area-Sanitation and Water Project (GAMA-SWP) to ensure improved sanitation and maintenance of hygiene among school children.

The GAMA-SWP is providing toilet facilities to schools in 11 Metropolitan, Municipal and District Assemblies (MMDAs) in Accra to prevent open defecation and its related diseases.

The GAMA-SWP is being sponsored by the World Bank.
Mrs Baabu said education alone could not necessarily change people, especially children's behaviours towards environmental cleanliness, hence the Safe Child Ghana initiative to motivate them through the games to identify sanitation problems affecting them and to find solutions.

'We have come out with a button up approach for children to feel free to influence authorities to know that it is an offence for someone to dump refuse into a drain.

'If we do not want children to be part of it then the problem will continue to exist.

'We need to educate ourselves about cleanliness for a change of attitude especially on indiscriminate open defecation, hand washing behaviours, maintenance of toilet facilities in schools, food and water safety and good environmental sanitation.'

Mr George Asiedu, the GAMA-SWP Co-ordinator and Consultant of the Ministry of Sanitation and Water Resources, said GAMA has earmarked on building 260 toilet facilities in schools in the beneficiary MMDAs.

He encouraged the Safe Child Ghana to intensify its education within the schools to inculcate in the children good environmental sanitation for them to grow with it.

Mr Harold Esseku, a Representative of the World Bank urged communities within the selected areas to take advantage of the opportunities being offered by GAMA-SWP to get a household toilet by the end of 2018.

Mr Stanley Okoh, the son of the late Madam Theodosia Okoh, who designed the national flag, who chaired the function advised assemblies to intensify their efforts at monitoring sanitary conditions and hygiene within the communities to prevent diseases. GNA