Nadowli-Kaleo DCE Undertakes Clean-up Exercise

Mrs Katherine T. Lankono, the Nadowli District Chief Executive in the Upper West Region joined Ghana Environmental Health Association to undertake a clean-up exercise in Nadowli, the District Capital, where she swept and collected garbage.

The District Chief Executive with health and sanitation management experts also cleared bushy parts of the town in an exercise, described as an initiative to encourage community members to participate in public health education and also observe good sanitation practices.

Mrs Lankono said the importance of clean-up exercise called for residents to keep their environment clean and healthy in order to prevent environmental diseases.

'I think that it is a good programme especially that we are doing it around the Hospital facility, and it is said that cleanliness is next to Godliness. If we have clean environment, doctors will have little work to do,' she said.

She urged constituents to adhere to the habit of cleaning their environments all the time without relying on environmental and sanitary officials to remind them of the need to clean their surroundings.

'This is a wake-up call especially for the Nadowli township, so that we keep a very healthy environment and also to own household latrines to enable us meet our District agenda of an open defecation free (O.D.F) by 2019,' she added.

The National Public Relations Officer of Ghana Environmental Health Association, Mr Salifu Braimah Andrews, told Ghana News Agency on the sideline of the event that the exercise was part of a nationwide one embarked by the Association with Upper West being the third region after cleaning Central and Northern regions.

The choice for Nadowli-Kaleo District was based on efforts the district had made to help strengthen what the environmental health district officers with others had done to improve sanitation to achieve ODF in the area, he added.

He was unhappy that a toilet facility built and completed for the past four years had not been commissioned for residents to use.

'We cannot fight any open defecation if we don't have toilet facility in the community; so, I appeal to stakeholders to commission the newly built water closet to the residents,' he said.

The clean-up exercise brought together sanitation officers from the region, District Assembly Staff, Staff of Nadowli hospital, market Women and Zoomlion members and residents coming out in their numbers for the exercise.