When the President of Ghana on 1 November, 2014 declared the first Saturday of each month as a National Sanitation Day following the unforgettable cholera outbreak that claimed over 150 lives in Ghana that year, it was meant to signify the lead role government ought to play in the fight to promote sanitation across the country. Over four years down the line, the day has escaped the memory of almost everyone and the issue of sanitation somehow has been relegated to the background among the public.
The question one is tempted to ask is whether there was ever a need to declare a single day in a whole month as a day for promoting sanitation. Such a declaration eminently proclaimed sanitation as an event rather than the overarching systemic thinking that we should attach to it.
It attempted to merely clean surroundings and gutters and rid them of filth. That was okay, but it was far less comprehensive.
According to the World Health Organization, “sanitation generally refers to the provision of facilities and services for the safe disposal of human urine and faeces. The word sanitation also refers to the maintenance of hygienic conditions, through services such as garbage collection and wastewater disposal”. This definition of sanitation is important not only because it comes from a global watchdog of health like the World Health Organization but because it identifies the three important components of sanitation – human excreta waste, solid waste and liquid waste.
Regardless of a national sanitation day or any measure put forward to address the problem of sanitation, it has to be understood that sanitation is a critical need that has skipped the majority of Ghanaians in a dangerous way that it promotes rapidly the compromise of the health of children, women, the young and the working population as well as the aged.
After independence over sixty years ago, it is funny and shameful to note that the total sanitation coverage in Ghana has not exceeded 15% for a long time. This means that only 15 in every 100 Ghanaians have access to sanitation facilities and services whiles the majority are left defenseless against the inevitable challenge of disease.
The picture of sanitation is embarrassing as open defecation is widespread and 3 out of five Ghanaians attend natures call in the bush, dump sites, drains or even at the beach; drains are choked with solid waste causing floods and quiet fantastically, the over 2,200 tonnes of garbage produced in Accra alone (this is estimated to fill the entire Accra Sports Stadium) is scattered on the streets and in drains; and most part of the wastewater in the country is discharged into rivers and other water sources without treatment, with the national capital of Accra getting only 10% of its wastewater treated.
To climax it all, a report jointly issued by the World Health Organization and the UN’s Children’s Fund in their MDG assessment of 2015 ranked Ghana as the 7th dirtiest country in the world.
Looking and imagining the sordid picture of sanitation in our country, it begs of us to identify the significant factors that limit access to sanitation for the majority of our people and emerge with long-lasting remedies that will secure for the present and future generations, the promise of a good standard of living devoid of preventable diseases that continue to shatter far too many dreams in the current situation, and present an opportunity of job creation and production.
To a large extent, the challenges to sanitation in Ghana and many other developing nations are linked to the inability to create proper disposal points for solid waste, lack of enforcement of sanitation laws, population growth, poor financing of sanitation policies, rural-urban migration, poor sanitation infrastructure, lack of sanitation technologies among others.
It is important to note that because these factors are intertwined and not mutually exclusive of each other, there is the need to approach interventions to sanitation by using a systems approach. Also, the experience of the user of sanitation facilities must be considered and connected to the collection of wastewater, solid waste and excreta to their transportation, treatment and result in their recycling and reuse.
In addition, there are disparities between rural and urban areas with regard to the factors that limit access to sanitation, the extent of their influence and the nature of the interventions. These should be taken into proper cognizance when formulating sanitation policies or interventions.
First of all, there is the need to intentionally create or designate specific points for the disposal of solid waste.
We are most often tempted to think that sanitation is an individual responsibility and not necessarily the duty of government. But we ought to think that people know that they have to clean their compounds and rid them of waste on a daily basis, they know that they have to clean their gutters and rid them of solid waste; schools and churches, market women and shop operators also know these things and they actually do them.
The problem is how far the waste collected by an individual can go to ensure that it doesn’t return to their compounds and gutters. Encouraging people to take responsibility for providing their own sanitation without creating dumpsites will only result in people gathering waste around themselves. It is without surprise that the over 2,200 tonnes of solid waste in Accra is scattered in the streets and drains of the city, causing nightmare situations most of the time.
In the urban areas, private companies take up the responsibility of collecting the solid waste of individual households for a fee. City dwellers must have to cope with this cost of providing sanitation, but the government cannot pay a blind eye to the cost of providing sanitation by way of solid waste collection.
Both in rural and urban areas, the government must recruit an army of waste mongers and equip them with transport facilities to collect the waste of households for a much lower fee than that charged by private companies. This should be the responsibility of the local government units of district, municipal and metropolitan assemblies.
But it should even be easier and cheaper in the rural areas where local leaders such as Unit Committee and Assembly Members should work together to designate disposal points for different sections of the community at convenient places.
Furthermore, to tackle the issue of inadequate sanitation infrastructure, government must collaborate with the private sector as well as Non-Governmental Organizations to provide widespread sanitation infrastructure such as public toilets, sewage systems, septic tanks and Container Based Sanitation equipment.
It is not enough for government to always lash out at the public for doing open defecation and throwing faecal matter into drains. People know that it is not good to defecate in public because they value their privacy and safety; people are shameful enough not to throw faeces into gutters in polythene bags; and they know that government can’t do everything for them and they don’t expect it to.
But government must not expect in its wildest expectations that its citizens will walk 2km daily to defecate even though they know the implications of open defecation.
Fortunately, governments over the years have been providing toilets and urinals for communities and public places in fulfilment of campaign promises, NGOs have been setting up these same facilities in various communities for a variety of purposes while the private sector ought to be doing its bid in that direction in pursuant of its corporate social responsibilities.
It is even refreshing to know that Container Based Sanitation (CBS) has been introduced by the private sector to help provide sanitation in a convenient way in urban areas with Clean Team a good example in the country at present as well as the biofill toilet systems which are cheaper and easier to put up. These innovations should be encouraged largely by government to ensure expansion of coverage.
What is challenging is that these efforts of the government, NGOs and the private sector often lack coordination and results mostly in locating sanitation infrastructure like toilets in places that do not allow for the public to fully patronize them.
What is now expected of government is not to buddy up with the Chinese government and beg them for cash to provide 100 or 200 or even 300 toilet facilities; but rather, government should be seen collaborating with the private sector and the NGOs to set up these facilities in consultation with the local people through the local government units to ensure their patronage, ownership and subsequent maintenance of the facilities.
This collaboration can be done at the local level where local government units are better placed to identify appropriate private sector players and NGOs. The same collaboration is needed in the construction of sewage systems to channel wastewater for proper treatment and disposal.
Moreover, government itself should not be seen to be sleeping on its own laws regarding sanitation responsibilities. Very too often, the government is loudest to lament about commercial residences not having toilet facilities especially in the cities whiles forgetting that it has the backing of the people to enforce the laws to ensure order and responsibility.
What is not clear is of factories that churn out far too much waste that is far too often disposed inappropriately. Examples include the wood industries as well as the mining companies which must be made by government through local government legislations to take responsibility for the waste they produce and how badly they tend to pollute our water bodies and make our water unusable.
As much as open defecation is condemnable, it is not only foolish but criminal for people to build houses without toilets for the sole purpose of renting them out. In this case, tenants are culprits as much as landlords. If the local government units in collaboration with Rent Control Division are able to register all rental accommodation in the country, it will facilitate the process of providing residential toilets and eliminating open defecation.
In the face of local government units concentrating on financial benefits they receive from businesses whiles compromising the law, it is important for central government to take much interest in the enforcement of sanitation laws by local government units.
The previous government mooted the idea of setting up a National Sanitation Authority. An institution like this should be considered by government to oversee the implementation of all sanitation policies and ensure enforcement of all sanitation regulations as well as coordinate all sanitation programs of government.
Another important way to reduce the menace of sanitation and promote access is to address the issue of rural-urban migration. In a previous article on addressing Accra’s congestion problem, I identified rural-urban migration as a subsidiary cause to the root cause of national resource investment concentration.
According to Professor George Owusu of the Centre for Migration Studies of the University of Ghana, over 80% of national investment has been concentrated in Accra alone since 2008. What this means is that, the resultant infrastructure, services and a whole lot of other investments from this concentration will form the congruent of factors pulling migrants from the edge to the centre. For Professor George Owusu, it must be expected that more of the slums in the capital will be seen in the coming years if the current trend continues.
Concentrating resources in Accra means that other regions are deprived of essential services and infrastructure. This results in people moving to Accra in search of services and opportunities that they have been deprived of in their regions. Consequently, this concentration means existing sanitation facilities become limited against the increased demand caused by a larger population. Also, shanty towns spring up causing an upward surge in the number of slums in the country thereby worsening the problems of sanitation as squatters must also have their way.
What is therefore expected of government is to spread investment of resources equitably across the country to create opportunities in other places outside the capital city. To this end, the growth poles (Northern Development Authority, Middle-Belt Development Authority and Coastal Development Authority) that the current government promised to establish must be given serious attention and consideration. Government must prioritize the needs of the various growth poles over corruption and mismanagement to revenge for the failure of the Savana Accelerated Development Authority.
It is without any shred of doubt that if rural-urban migration is curtailed, the sanitation problem which is predominantly deplorable in the urban areas will be minimized.
Another pair of factors that cannot be overlooked when it comes to providing sanitation is population growth and poor financing for sanitation interventions. The rate of population growth has continued to exceed the rate at which sanitation facilities are provided in Ghana.
According to the Chief Officer at the WASH unit of UNICEF in Ghana, David Duncan, it could take over 500 years for Ghana to eliminate the practice of open defecation alone due to the slow pace at which strategies, laws and interventions are being implemented. He added that in the last 25 years, Ghana made only 1% progress at eliminating the practice.
Also, a WaterAid financial report indicates that 7million more people in Ghana lack access to sanitation than in 1990. This logically means that with so much increase in population over the period, not much has been added in terms of sanitation facilities or services.
These are all indications of the poor funding for sanitation facilities. It therefore behooves on government with the establishment of the Ministry of Water Resources and Sanitation to do more to provide sanitation by allocating more money to finance a greater number of sanitation facilities than previously.
To the point that poor sanitation in Ghana costs the country over $79million annually, simple logic begs of government to rather spend more to provide citizens with improved sanitation than having to spend more in an attempt to cure the damage done by poor sanitation. This means more Cedi allocations for more toilet facilities, more urinals, more sewage systems, more septic tanks and more treatment machinery in the face of an ever increasing population.
Most importantly, any sanitation intervention must end in making the waste disposed usable. In view of this, government must commit to making room for new technologies to treat and recycle waste. In this regard, the solid waste collected and deposited at designated dumpsites, the faecal matter in our toilets as well as the wastewater collected should all be treated and reproduced for use in various ways.
The disposal of faecal matter into the sea and Lavender Hill should be replaced with more hygienic engineering technologies for their treatment and recycling.
In March 2017, 46 people died during a landslide at Ethiopia’s largest rubbish dump outside AddisAbaba. The Koshe landfill site, the largest in Ethiopia, collapsed burying several squatter homes. What this incident teaches us is that we cannot dump our way out to achieve proper sanitation. It is for this reason that sanitation must not stop at dumping, but end in reuse which is only possible through recycling. That is why the Water Supply and Sanitation Collaborative Council defines sanitation as “the collection, transport, treatment and disposal or reuse of human excreta, domestic wastewater and solid waste”.
But if government should lead the way to ensuring that wastewater is treated and disposed, and that solid waste and excreta are recycled and reused, what specific measures must it take?
The current government proposed in its party’s manifesto to partner the private sector to introduce technologies to recycle waste and produce energy. This is good to know, but it should not stop at merely identifying foreign companies and giving them contracts to recycle plastic waste.
We need systems that will yield long-lasting production capacity and survive changes in government. Ghana’s premier technology institution, the Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology alongside the newly converted technical universities, other technical institutions as well as the private sector should be given the chance to tackle this challenge.
Government should work with these institutions to introduce courses and develop curricula to train and produce students on a yearly basis with the capacity to treat wastewater, recycle solid waste and excreta for use in further production and energy generation. Government should also have the will to part with a few millions of Cedis to invest in providing the human resources as well as the materials and equipment necessary for the training of students in the various schools for that matter. This should be the new page in the country’s industrial transformation drive.
This will be a worthwhile effort of retooling our educational system to satisfy the demands of our age. The longstanding perception and belief that Ghanaians are technologically inclined as much as their colleagues in the Asian Tigers, must now be tested once more. What is often lacking is the will of central government to commit resources to a worthy course. In any case, the pursuit of government to promote sanitation will bear no good fruits if it does not end in treatment and recycling.
With the beat now well drummed on the One-District One-Factory policy, it comes as an open opportunity for government to work with the private sector and our educational institutions to establish factories in each region or perhaps district with a fierce reputation for recycling waste for further production. It will be a great boost in generating employment and cutting out completely our trade deficit in the importation of plastic materials especially. And very simply, it will help fulfill the government’s policy agenda.
Interestingly, we must also be looking at the possibility of changing not only the attitude of people with regards to sanitation, but also the national perception of waste and resources. We can very easily cite gold or oil as national resources, but the ability to turn organic waste into energy and fertilizer as well as plastic waste into various plastic materials joins them with gold and oil as important national resources. What government must do is to follow in the footsteps of some private enterprises by offering to buy well sorted waste from individuals and households. This will be quite expensive to do but on a long term basis it will transform the narrative and make plastic waste as uncommon as gold and diamond. In any case, it will offer the raw materials required by waste recycling factories.
Finally, as much as government can do and must do, the public need to be thoroughly educated in words and deeds about the benefits of sanitation. This education must center on three important considerations which cannot be compromised.
Firstly, education should end in teaching the public to understand that good sanitation will protect our natural resources such as water. In the midst of a rapidly warming planet occasioned by climate change, if there is anything we should guard strongly and jealously, it should be our water bodies. If our governments allow us to pollute our water bodies through illegal mining and other bad practices, if we fail to treat domestic and industrial wastewater before discharging it into our water bodies, then no one should tell us that we are mortgaging the safe drinking water that we currently enjoy.
Secondly, public education on sanitation should teach us to know that the more we pollute our environment by practicing poor sanitation, the more we are exposing ourselves to the dangers of disease. In short, the nation should be enlightened further to know that effective sanitation practices provide barriers between the hazards of waste and humans in such a way as to break the disease transmission cycle. Individuals should be made to know that a good sanitation will reduce the hospital bills of the household and bring long-lasting happiness into the home.
Finally, sanitation is a human right. The right to water and sanitation is an important part of the right of every citizen to an adequate standard of living as recognized by a resolution of the United Nations Human Rights Council. This resolution which was endorsed by the UN General Assembly on July 28, 2010 made particular mention of the over 2.6 billion people in the world with no access to basic sanitation. It should therefore be the quest of every citizen to enjoy the full complement of human rights by contributing actively to promote sanitation.
These three considerations make the need for effective sanitation and the right to sanitation a non-negotiable issue. Therefore, to a large extent, the success of government in making the public aware of the need to contribute in their commitment to promoting sanitation will amount to a safer and sound nation where all are free from the ravage of disease.
As we call on government to take a lead role in promoting sanitation, we all as Ghanaian citizens must push our efforts therefore a little bit farther, and embolden our commitment much more broader, to secure for this and future generations a nation that is safe, sound and free from the fear of disease.
We can do this as individuals in our homes, we can lead our households to rid ourselves of filth, we can play an active role in promoting sanitation in our communities, and we can advocate for all stakeholders to play their roles in sanitizing our environment and making it safer. We do these in our realization that this is our responsibility and contribution as true and active citizens to create a society in which all are strong and sound to pursue their own measure of happiness.
By
David Azuliya
Mobile: 050-500-5012
Email: [email protected]
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