10 in Court Tomorrow for Open Defecation

The Komenda Edina Eguafo Abirem (KEEA) municipality in the Central region is set to arraign ten persons it has arrested before court Tuesday January 2 for openly defecating at the beaches there.

The ten made up of seven men and three women respectively were arrested at the Elmina beach and the Salt Mining fields there, the Municipal authorities told Starr News’ Central Regional Correspondent Kwaku Baah-Acheamfour.

Their actions they say is hampering efforts to make the Municipality the cleanest in the region and also curbing disease outbreak.

The Municipality was among the hard hit areas in the region two years ago when cholera outbreak hit the country.

The situation forced authorities to resort to prosecution of offenders who defy orders to engage in open defecation as the assembly’ educational campaigns aimed at stopping scourge was not making any meaningful impact.

Despite the assembly’s provision of toilet facilities to serve the populace, residents still resort to the beaches making the area unattractive to revelers.

Speaking to Baah-Acheamfour the sanitation officer of the KEEA Alex Damptey said “We actually started with public education sensitizing the people on the need to desist from open defecation and its associated consequences but as human as we are there are still the people we call the recalcitrant who will not want listen…so we decided to now arrest people and have them prosecuted.”

He continued: “We mounted a serious attack on those doing it [defecating] in the open arresting ten people who were defecating at the beaches and handed over to the police waiting for tomorrow to see the next line of action.”

Last year over 20 people were fined Ghc300 by the Elmina magistrate court with one person being imprisoned for six months for engaging in open defecation.

Source: StarrFMonline