Sanitation And Access To Clean Water In Ghana

My name is Agilinko Rosina. I am a form two student of Siniensi Junior High School and I would like to talk about Clean Water and Sanitation. What is clean water?

Clean water is when water does not contain any germs or dirt. To begin with, many people across the country do not have access to clean water, they either drink from wells, rivers, lakes, and other unclean sources. They use the water from these same sources for cooking. Once this water is contaminated, they can easily contract diseases and sometimes die or put pressure on our hospitals or clinics.

Furthermore, sanitation is very bad in the Builsa land. People throw rubbish anywhere and the gutters are full of rubbish and stagnant water, which helps mosquitoes to breed. These mosquitoes bite us and infect us with malaria which affect our work and studies. We spend money on hospital bills, which could have been used for something else.

In addition to that, poor sanitation affects us a lot, lack of dustbins in our markets, schools, and on our streets cause people to dispose rubbish anywhere, our animals take in these rubbers and die which is a financial loss to we ourselves. We all know that it is our livestock which we sell to get money for our basic needs in order to reduce poverty.

Also, the lack of toilet facilities and urinals in our communities and public places make people to defecate in the open, and in water bodies like rivers and dams which pollutes the water. Flies sit on the faeces, pick up the germs and come into contact with our food, contaminate it and bring about diseases like cholera and diarrhoea when we eat it.

To solve all these problems, we must first know that water is life and we cannot live without water. Therefore, the government and the District Assemblies should provide us with boreholes and pipe borne water. In Siniensi for in stance we do not have portable water. Efforts should be made to provide us with pipe borne water.

More toilet facilities and dustbins should be provided in our schools, markets, clinics and in individual with the help of our district assemblies. It is surprising that Siniensi J.H.S do not even have a toilet facility, so how do we practice what our teachers teach us?

We should always clean around our houses, wash our cloths and utensils thoroughly, wash our hands with soap under running water before eating, after visiting the toilet and after returning from funeral houses where we may have shaken hands with others.

We must also practice personal hygiene like brushing our teeth twice daily, shaving our pubic hair, bathing with soap and water, avoid sharing personal items like toothbrushes, sponges, blades and shaving sticks, braziers and under wares and many others.

We should eat warm food, heat our leftover food before eating, boil our water to kill germs before drinking and report to the nearest health facility for regular check up or when we suspect any signs of sickness.

In conclusion, I advise you all to co-operate with me, practice hygienic measures so that we can live healthy and work together for the development of our beloved country Ghana. My name is Agilinko Rosina and thank you very much for listening.

This article is written by Agilinko Rosina, a member of the Debate and Leadership Team of Siniensi J.H.S. Rosina is currently in final year, i.e J.H.S 3. This article was written and presented to her collegue students at her school, Siniensi J.H.S on 26th July, 2018 when she was in form two (2).

Touched and worried about the attitude of citizens towards sanitation, steeped in unhygeinic practices as well as the lack of access to portable water in her community and amongst other places she visited in the country or sees and hears from the news bulletins, which lead to deaths and diseases, she is thoughful and wonders what happens to the future should this continues. As a dream to for citizens of any background to have access to portable water and to practice hygeinic measures, she writes the following article.

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