T-Group to assist government agenda on sanitation

The T-GroUP, a research based entity is to help facilitate government’s agenda on sanitation to ensure a clean and healthy environment for all through sensitization and education campaign.

Most people needed education to stop open defecation, littering and dumping solid wastes around and assist them to gain access to potable and clean drinking water, Professor Sampson Oduro–Kwarteng, Associate Professor, Department of Civil Engineering, Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology (KNUST), stated in Accra on Thursday.

Prof Oduro-Kwarteng stated during a day’s workshop on Water, Sanitation and Hygiene (WASH) and groundwater organized by T-GroUp, on the theme: “Implementing practical transition management for improving access to WASH services and groundwater management: case of Dodowa, Ghana”.

He explained that, the intention of T-GroUP, implementing the Transition Management (TM) Project, was to empower citizens to portray good behaviours towards sanitation.

It also seeks to ensure that citizens adhere to a clean community without littering and dumping of refuse, guarantee that every house owned a toilet, clean and potable water supply, and at least every house had a litter bin.

He said, gone were the days where community members organized and embarked on communal labors to tidy the environment to ensure an infection and disease - free community without depending on politicians and assembly members.

“We need to bring back the spirit of communal labor for people to take up their own actions; the period where footpaths to streams and farms were cleared and tidied to safeguard clean environment,” he emphasized.

He added that, most hand–dug and mechanized boreholes in communities were contaminated because of the closeness to pit latrines and heap of garbage, adding that, the contaminations came about basically because viruses from the untreated ground water went into the boreholes.

He said with that, TM project engaged communities in participatory processes to undertake monthly clean up exercises.

The project also seeks to create change agents within communities to educate and sensitize other community members on the need for cleanliness in the community and also set an agenda to bring about change and sustainability.

Prof. Oduro–Kwarteng said they had succeeded in getting some households to build their own toilets with their own monies without depending on any Non-Governmental Organizations (NGOs) or the government.

He said local artisans had been trained to support the drive in making every household own a toilet.

TM is a governance approach for sustainable development, which has been practiced through action-oriented research.

It is a participatory process bringing together frontrunners and change agents to create a vision, strategic transition pathways for action ignite and influence a transition for sustainability of service delivery.