A number of schools lack toilet facilities
The Coalition of NGOs in Water and Sanitation (CONIWAS) has urged government and the Ghana Education Service to step up efforts to ensure that basic schools across the country have decent toilet facilities.
At a press briefing in Accra on the perennial lack of toilet facilities in Ghanaian schools, the Vice President of the Coalition, Mr. Attah Arhin said the absence of toilets posed health threats to the school children, teachers and other educational workers.
The 2017 EMIS report by the Ghana Education Service showed that more than 7,400 public schools out of 21,438 do not have toilet facilities, meaning over two million Ghanaian children in those schools alone are compelled to resort to defecating in unorthodox open spaces mostly within the immediate surroundings of their schools.
Similarly, out of the 9,604 private basic schools sampled over 1,631 do not have toilet facilities, rendering an estimated 430,000 pupils in private schools to defecate outside a toilet during school hours.
Mr Arhin said the practice led to infections such as intestinal worms, diarrhoea, cholera, malnutrition and stunting among the school children.
Besides, it also leads to absenteeism among the school children.
Mr Arhin said an investment of about $147million would be required to provide decent toilets in the remaining 35 per cent of public basic schools.
“CONIWAS believes that this is an amount government can easily raise to address this unfortunate situation even in a single year. We are convinced that if government decides to prioritise this, every basic school in Ghana will have access to a clean and decent toilet facility within one year,” he said.
Mr Arhin said while providing toilets in schools, care must also be taken to ensure that consideration is given to issues of gender and disability so that no child is left behind, adding that, the broad assumptions that everybody was capable of using a standardised toilet facility are false in many circumstances.
He said there was the need therefore to adhere to the minimum standards for toilet facilities in schools.
