Akatsi: Mr Dominic Aboagye, the Principal Public Health Engineer at the Ministry of Local Government Chieftaincy and Religious Affairs, has said the government together with its donor partners is committed to defeating open defecation by 2030. As of 2015, only one rural household out of ten was using improved household toilets while three in every ten of them practiced open defecation, according to the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF).
According to Ghana News Agency, Mr Aboagye, who is also in charge of Business Development at the Local Government Ministry, revealed that the country only recorded a 1 per cent decrease in the fight against open defecation between 2010 and 2021. He revealed this at Akatsi during a two-day training workshop for over 30 artisans and material suppliers drawn from Akatsi South to scale up the construction of toilets through community education and others.
The situation, he said, called for extensive collaboration including engaging the private sector and individuals to leverage their programmes which received funding from UNICEF and other partners. Mr Aboagye further indicated that Akatsi South remains one of the three best selected communities including Yendi and Kpandai for a pilot programme that brought together input manufacturers in addition.
Among the issues to be addressed, he said, was the ‘Material Aggregation Model’ that falls under the congregation process where all demand costs would be put together for reduction purposes to enable every household to own a toilet facility. Construction of communal toilets also poses a major challenge since it does not motivate households to build their own toilets.
Mr David Nartey, the Akatsi South Municipal Water Sanitation, and Hygiene (WASH) Focal Person from the Environmental Health office, the implementing unit of ODF in the area, stated that a total of 21,000 toilets ought to be constructed by 2030 within the Municipality. ‘To declare Akatsi South an Open Defecation Free (ODF) community, we must construct at least 350 within a month,’ he added. The participants, on their part, pledged to use their expertise to fight the canker.
Between 1990 and 2015, the country’s population equation reversed from 36 per cent living in urban areas to 64 per cent living in rural areas to 54 per cent in urban and 46 per cent in rural areas (UNICEF and WHO, 2015).