Sanitation Minister should not be sacked – Sanitation expert

Water and Sanitation expert, Professor Sampson Oduro-Kwarteng has rubbished calls by a section of Ghanaians to sack the Sanitation Minister, Joseph Kofi Adda for failing to tackle sanitation issues in the country.

According to the Deputy Director of the Regional Water and Environmental Sanitation Centre (RWESC) at KNUST, sacking the Minister will not solve the sanitation challenges the country is battling because he is not to blame for the current sanitation situation.

Prof Oduro-Kwarteng highlighted factors such as cost recovery and poor attitude towards sanitation by officials and citizens as the main causes of poor sanitation in the country.

“I don’t think removing the Minister for Sanitation will solve the problem. Those who are calling for the removal of the Minister should know that it will not solve the problem. Cost recovery is one problem with sanitation. If you are not able to recover cost, people will continue to defecate around, littering around,” he said.

He explained that, “Whenever we talk about attitudinal change, or behavioural change, we always talk about the users but the attitudinal change I’m talking about should be both the officials who are involved in the service delivery as well as the users or the beneficiaries or the clients who are supposed to use the services.”

He challenged sanitation officials working in the Metropolitan, Municipal and District assemblies to adopt positive attitudes towards work in order to improve sanitation in the country.

He also encouraged citizens to support government’s efforts by paying for sanitary services being rendered to them in order to receive better services.

“The Metropolitan, Municipal and District Assemblies officials who are involved in sanitation should be able to do the right thing to drive sanitation delivery. Their attitude towards work should change. The users are also supposed to change attitude when it comes to paying for the service. People should be willing to pay full cost for the service. And when they pay for the full cost of the service, then they can receive better service,” he advised.