Improper burial of corpses threatens water safety

Wa, Sept. 16, GNA – The uncoordinated and improper way of burying corpses is posing a great threat to water safety in the Upper West Region, Mr. Worlanyo Siabi, the Regional Director of Community Water and Sanitation Agency, (CWSA) has said.

He said most communities in the region had no properly demarcated lands for burial and so people buried their dead bodies everywhere, even on their compounds.

Mr. Siabi said this at a two-day Water and Sanitation Hygiene (WASH) stakeholders’ workshop organised by the Wa Municipal Assembly with WaterAid Ghana at Wa, on Thursday.

The CWSA Regional Director, therefore, appealed to all District Assemblies in the region to liaise with their traditional authorities for the allocation of well demarcated lands in all communities for the burial of corpses.

This, Mr. Siabi said, would assist the CWSA to know how to select sites for the drilling of boreholes in order to ensure water safety.

He said the region currently had about 78 per cent water coverage, thus, exceeding the 76 per cent Millennium Development Goal (MDG) Target on Water, adding that, what should concern them now was how to sustain the achievement.

The Director noted that the region had less than 10 per cent coverage in sanitation as against the MDG target of 56 per cent and called for more resources to be committed to the area of sanitation.

Mr. Siabi announced that the CWSA was championing the formulation of a Legislative Instrument (LI) to empower the Assemblies to implement and manage water and sanitation resources, including punishing offenders.

Mr. Yakubu Duogu, the Wa Municipal Chief Executive, (MCE) said the objective of the workshop was to bring stakeholders together to discuss key challenges and strategies in WASH activities and to make recommendations which would enhance their partnership in the Municipality.

He said the Wa Municipal Assembly, through its Water and Sanitation Programme, drilled a number of boreholes with the support of WaterAid, ProNet North, Water Vision and the Government (GoG) Priority Water Projects and Guinea-worm Eradication Boreholes Project.

He gave the assurance that the Assembly would continue to do its best to sustain the water coverage and also improve on the sanitation situation.

Mr. Enoch Cudjoe, WaterAid Policy Officer, took the participants through a presentation to highlight the National Sanitation Policy with the objective of equipping them with adequate information on the revised edition of the Policy.