Winning the game of good sanitation

Good sanitation is good but as always said, “good things don’t come easily”, they take an incredible amount of time and effort to happen. Fifteen out of the seventeen Sustainable Development Goals has something to do with the need for good sanitation and clean environment. This simply tells how important these are for human, plant, animal and business survival. Development has no value if the people and things for which it is meant cannot enjoy it in full freedom and without fear of any disease outbreak due to poor sanitary and environmental conditions someday to come.

Nobody likes dirt and stinky environments. I believe strongly that every citizen will wish their homes, surroundings and everywhere they go in the country have good sanitary and environmental conditions like those at the Flag Staff House, La Palm Beach Hotel, Axim Beach Hotel, Royal Senchi, Sky Plus, Holy Trinity, Volta Serene Hotel and the many best and cleanest places one can think of in the country.

Who made these places clean the way they are? The people who work there as well as those that visit there day and night.

Where do they come from? Ghana! They are not from foreign lands. They are ordinary Ghanaians like me and you.

How do they think and behave towards the environment and always ensure good sanitation at these places the way they do? They are made to develop the mindset and it becomes an everyday practice of ensuring good sanitation at these places.

What I’m I trying to say? It is the mindset, not policies. Policies can fail if mindsets remain the same. But then, if mindsets are worked on to change, policies are bound to succeed.

The big question, however, is how can the mindset be changed? This question reminds me of one of my favourite thoughts which says; “change is a tough thing and is a gradual process which can take more than lifetime years to cause, but it takes one with like-minded others to start it from somewhere. It is a chain!’’.

If we can be realistic, sincere, fair, and genuine enough to ourselves as a nation, winning the sanitation game is never going to be an overnight job. Sanitation policies upon policies since the days of Dr Kwame Nkrumah have not helped. Sanitation issues are getting worse due to increased population, increased production of plastic and other waste and the increased mindset of ‘it is not my job to keep the environment clean’.

Having countless waste management services isn’t a bad idea but we simply turn to abuse them. People throw things anywhere and say Zoom Lion etc will come for it. Students at our tertiary institutions who can be agents of winning the sanitation game rather intentionally litter their classrooms and campuses and say, “if we did not litter around, the waste management services will not get job to do.”

Our Universities and other institutions of higher learning now sign contracts worth millions of Ghana Cedis with waste management service companies to come and clean the dirt students intentionally make instead of making efforts towards a change of mindset in order to win the sanitation game.

Let’s get realistic with ourselves. The good sanitation game cannot be won anytime soon but if we can adopt pragmatic approaches to winning it, we can win it with the change of mindset and the change of mindset isn’t going to happen overnight. It will take time!

The approach can be focusing on the young ones through our school and religious systems by cultivating their mindset and engaging them in practical activities of good sanitation practices. From time to time, we can engage workers from some of the best and cleanest institutions to engage these children in practical approaches to good sanitation and telling them how they have managed to ensure good sanitation at their institutions. Once they pick the right mindset from infancy and grow with it, we can be sure of achieving good sanitation in the very long term. It will take longer time to achieve but the outcome will be more sustainable once achieved.

Kenya have recently taken a bold step by banning the production of plastics. Our leaders can do same but let’s get for the producers and sellers first an alternative job. Better still, a better approach can be adopted to this.

God bless mother Ghana!!!