GAMA-SWP launches door-to-door household toilet campaign

The Greater Accra Metropolitan Area – Sanitation and Water Project (GAMA-SWP) has launched a door-to-door community engagement programme to ensure that every landlord at Akweteyman and its environs gets a toilet facility in their homes.

The programme, with the overall objective of increasing access to improved sanitation and water supply with emphasis on low-income urban communities, was being funded by the World Bank through the Ministry of Sanitation and Water Resources.

The choice of Akweteyman and its environs was based on the fact that majority of the people living in the area resort to the use of public places of convenience or engage in open defecation exposing residents to health risks.

Mr Graham Sarbah, the Accra Metropolitan Assembly (AMA) Coordinator of GAMA-SWP in an interview with the Ghana News Agency, said the programme was to strengthen management of environmental sanitation and called on the people to register with the Okaikwei North Municipal Assembly to get household toilets.

“We are also embarking on vigorous public health education to ensure that residents get newly sustainable, environmentally friendly and affordable toilets,” he said.

Mr Sarbah said the different types of toilets and accessories that were being promoted included; fabricated built ones with metals and digesters to receive human waste to convert into valuable nutrients, which cost GHc850.

“Other types of toilets that are designed with cement blocks cost GHc1,100 and 70 per cent of the cost of the various toilets mentioned will be borne by the Government, based on their choices,” he stated.

Mr Issah Fuseini, the Member of Parliament for the area expressed concern about the impunity with which people defecated openly and the indiscriminate disposal of human waste in black polythene bags.

He said there was the need for conscious efforts to address the sanitation and environmental challenges facing the communities and called on the people to embrace the new household toilet initiative.

Mr Fuseini pledged to support the first 100 people who would register with the Assembly with GHc200 for the provision of the toilet facility with.

Mr Abdullah Ni Odai, the Presiding Member of the Assembly said a monitoring task force had been directed to arrest and prosecute anyone found in an open defecating or littering the streets in the metropolis.

He said the Assembly would stringently enforce its bye-laws to bring sanity in Accra.