Set aside sustainable funding mechanism to tackle sanitation – AMA Boss

In his contribution towards addressing the challenges of sanitation in the country, the Mayor of the Accra Metropolitan Assembly (AMA), Mohammed Adjei Sowah, has appealed to the central government to set aside a sustainable funding mechanism for the purposes of fighting high rates of insanitary conditions in the country.

“Ghanaians make lots of noise about appropriate solutions to handle our sanitation problems in the country, but never consider a constant funding mechanism to keep the agenda going. This is what is lacking in the system,” he noted

He said this recently during the 8th edition of the National Development Forum organized by the National Development Planning Commission (NDPC) in Accra. It was on the topic: “Sustainable Management of Ghana’s Sanitation”.

According to the AMA Boss, if sanitation is a priority source to government, then a funding mechanism must be set aside to enable it address and fight the canker like that of the flagship “free SHS” programme and others.

“The central government must pay attention to how to set up a funding mechanism to solve the bad sanitation in the country. If government is able to set a fund for its priority “free SHS” programme, then it must be done to the same sanitation”, he hinted.

“Tackling refuse and solid waste is a challenge. There must be a fundamental approach to deal with it. Though Accra has the capacity to handle solid waste, it is challenging to address the issue because some fundamental tentacles are missing”, the Mayor said.

Minister for Sanitation and Water Resources, Cecilia Abena Dapaah, outlined measures the ministry is taking to ensure that the high rate of waste (solid and liquid) are adequately curbed across the country.

She indicated that, the ministry has managed to build toilet facilities in about 3,000 communities to curb the open-defecation, as well as distributing bins to various houses through the application of multi-facet approach.

“We are undertaking lots of advocacy programmes about the bins on our roads to help make the environment clean and sustainable. We are also going to get our landfill sites engineered, thus, to make it deformation, green and turn them to parks in the year 2020”, she hinted.

“Nobody wants to see your liquid waste loitering around, not even your family, improper disposal of defecation and open-defecation is the cause of our problems, mentally, physically, emotionally and health wise which every Ghanaian must stand up and fight against in the country”, she added.

Participants include high-profile personalities like Prof. Esi Awuah, former vice-chancellor of the University of Energy and Natural Resources, Mrs. Ama Gbadago, Executive Secretary of Environmental Service Providers Association, Mr. Lukeman Salifu, Chief Executive of WasteCare Association, the Private and Public sector, CSOs and other relevant stakeholders.

Source: Eric Nii Sackey || [email protected]