Health officers blame assemblies for the poor sanitation

Wa, Oct. 21, GNA - The Ghana Environmental Health Officers Association (GEHOA) of the Ministry of Local Government, Rural Development and Environment on Friday blamed the deteriorating sanitation situation in the cities and towns throughout the country, in part to lack of support by the assemblies to their environmental health departments.

This, they said, was because, the metropolitan, municipal and district assemblies do not see sanitation as a priority area of their duty and as a result deprive their environmental health departments of the much needed logistics and equipment to tackle the sanitation problem head on and a sustainable basis.

The association made this known at a press conference held at Wa on Friday by its national executive council during which the meeting deliberated on sanitation issues and welfare of the staff. Mr Raphael Marfo, Public Relations Officer of the Association, who addressed the media on behalf of the association, noted regrettably the low sanitation labourers available to the environmental health departments of the metropolitan, municipal and district assemblies whose present combined sanitary labourers is less than five thousand. He said before the department was transferred from the Ministry of Health to the present Ministry in 1995, it could boast of more than 30,000 sanitary labourers.

Mr Marfo stated that the press conference was also to let Ghanaians know the causes of the ever- increasing sanitation problems in the country.

He said the assemblies understanding of sanitation was putting up physical structures such as toilets and urinals but not the provision of logistics and equipment for the cleaning of the environment. The association claimed that since the transfer of the department to the Ministry of Local Government, Rural Development and Environment, regional offices of the department had not been provided with means of transport to carry out effective monitoring and supervision and interact with the staff in the districts.

The Association added that, what had compounded the deplorable sanitation situation in the country is the lack of motivation of members since joining the Ministry of Local Government, Rural Development and Environment. It therefore appealed to the government to take a second look at the transfer notes upon which the department was sent to the Ministry. On clean-up campaigns, the environmental officers noted that sanitation is not solved through adhoc measures and suggested that existing structures should rather be strengthened to improve sanitation. Mr. Henry Baga, Wa municipal environmental health officer, who presided said the Wa township with 80,000 population has only 61 sanitary labourers, some of whom are now weak 21 Oct. 06