Gov’t Charged to Prioritize Sanitation

Yaw Attah Arhin, Technical Coordinator, Water, Sanitation and Hygiene (WASH) has called on government to prioritize sanitation and increase its budget for the sector.

According to him, government’s lack of prioritizing the sector has resulted in a slash of money allocated to WASH in the 2018 budget.

Mr. Attah Arhin made this statement at the commemoration of World Toilet Day and Universal Children’s Day held last week at the Church of Pentecost, Twereboa English Assembly by the World Vision International Ghana in partnership with Kings Hall Media and the Church of Pentecost.

He said “Unfortunately, this year’s budget for WASH has been reduced and so we are going to engage government to see how we can prioritize this sector so that other sectors can also benefit.

“When you analyze the WASH sector budget, it has never been up to 1 percent of the entire GDP of Ghana but if you consider that this is such an important sector, then we think that government should do something about it”, he added.

Mr. Attah Arhin called on all Ghanaians to change their attitude and adopt a ‘positive’ sanitation behavior which will improve the health and wellbeing of children.

He said if Ghanaians are educated properly and they adopt a positive attitude towards good hygiene, proper sanitation and safe water, the health rate in Ghana will improve.

“When the health situation in the country improves government will be able to redirect the expenditure on health in other ‘productive’ sectors”.

Speaking on how their outfit seeks to monitor government, he said, “we are going to roll out a programme with the coalition of NGOs and Water Sanitation to monitor government on what they have promised and what they have actually delivered.”

According to him, government will sit up if they are being monitored to fulfill the promises they made and if they are fulfilled, Ghanaians will be informed.

He commended government for launching the National Sanitation Campaign as a first step to combating poor sanitation and urged the NPP government to be on its toes.

The Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of Kings Hall Media, Emmanuel Addai asserts that the church was a right choice of preaching on open defecation as over 70% of the population of Ghana are Christians.

He said Christianity was the best way to inculcate a positive attitude towards proper sanitation and personal hygiene.

Reverend Seth John Akwei, Christian Commitment Manager for World Vision Int’l Ghana in his remarks stated that “to prevent open defecation, we have to look at what the bible says about sanitation, safe water and personal hygiene.

He said that diseases like typhoid and cholera are derived from open defecation so creating awareness on the issue is important so that Ghanaians can adopt clean sanitation to prevent sicknesses.

 

Source: Jennifer Avemee/ thePublisher