Students urged to support efforts to improve sanitation

Cape Coast, April 1, GNA - Ms Mercy Arhin, Cape Coast Municipal Chief Executive (MCE), on Saturday stated that her administration would leave no stone unturned in its efforts at improving sanitation in the municipality.

She called on all inhabitants of the municipality, especially students to support this noble effort by desisting from all negative environmental practices, which degraded the environment.

Ms Arhin made these remarks, in a speech read for her to climax the 44th Hall Week celebration of Oguaa Hall, the premier hall of the University of Cape Coast (UCC), on the theme: "Improving sanitation in the halls of residence-the role of students", at Cape Coast.

The MCE said it was unfortunate that in spite of the huge expenditures that the assemblies continued to make towards improving sanitation in their areas, the attitudes of many continuously served as a hindrance to their efforts at achieving the desired goals. Ms Arhin underscored the importance of good sanitation practices and stated that clean and sound environment constituted a pre-requisite for a healthy human resource base needed to accelerate the nation's socio-economic development.

In an address read for him, Osabarima Kwesi Atta II, Omanhen of Oguaa traditional area, who was the guest of honour, commended the students for the choice of the theme, which he described as appropriate especially at a time when the issue of sanitation continued to engage the attention of all stakeholders in the nation's development. He advised them to attach importance to issues of environmental cleanliness, stressing that, they should endeavour to make the university environment and their halls of residence clean to avoid the outbreak of an epidemic.

Osabarima Atta urged the students to strive to make a positive impact on their halls of residence before leaving UCC by strictly adhering to sound environmental practices to ensure good health for all on the campus.

Mr Alex de Graft-Hanson, president of the hall, stated that it was disheartening that students who were regarded as future leaders of the country could engage in indiscriminate dumping of refuse as was the practice in other communities whose levels of enlightenment was nowhere near that of the students.

He said in their halls of residence, a student could be seen dumping refuse on the ground around a dustbin just because he/she felt the few sanitary staff available should be given enough work to do to justify the somewhat meagre salaries paid to them.

According to him, no nation could develop with such unhelpful attitudes and therefore appealed to all especially his colleague students in tertiary institutions to develop a positive attitude towards issues of sanitation to help make the environment clean.

Mr de Graft-Hanson said it was in this vein that the huge sums of money that frequently went into the management of sanitation could be directed to other wealth-creation ventures to speed up the nation's development. 01 April 07