Minister calls on media to highlight poor sanitation problems

Mr Amidu Issahaku Chinnia, the Deputy Upper West Regional Minister has called on the media to highlight on the poor sanitation problems in the region for redress.

He said the problem could be solved if advocacy and effective participatory educational campaigns and enforcement of the sanitation by-laws were carried out.

He was speaking at the World Toilet Day celebration in Jirapa on theme: "Toilet for all-leaving no one behind", which sought to create awareness on the need to expand access to safe toilets and to inspire action to tackle the global sanitation crisis.

In 2013, the United Nations General Assembly officially designated November 19 as World Toilet Day, coordinated by UN-Water in collaboration with Governments and Relevant Stakeholders.

The Minister noted that statistics from UN-Water indicated that, globally an estimated 4.2 billion people were living without “safely managed sanitation” and around 673 million people practised open defecation.

In 2015, the sustainable development goals six was launched to achieve sanitation for all and combat open defecation by 2030.

"Government is investing heavily on sanitation in its bit to make the country clean and healthy for all, a number of institutional toilets are being built across the region to ensure that the transit population have a place to defecate if the need arises", he said.

He said government might re-introduce the “Sama Sama” concept and to make adequate resources available to the Environmental Health Officers to carry out their mandate of checking insanitary conditions in communities to ensure clean, safe and healthy environment for the benefit of the people.

On her part, Mrs Christine Bombanye-Amadu, Jirapa Municipal Chief Executive (MCE), said authorities had initiated plans to form a sanitation task force to enforce sanitation by-laws towards achieving 100 per cent open defecation free of the municipality by 2020.

Mrs Bomenye-Amadu assured the environmental unit in the municipality that, the needed resources and logistics would be provided to realize the dream.