By: Gloria Amoh
There seems to be a bit of a challenge in the fight to overcome open defecation in Accra as Mallam, a suburb of the Weija Gbawe Municipal District lacks public toilet facilities.
This lack comes from the abandonment of a storey building toilet facility built for the community some years ago. According to sources the toilet facility was built 36 years ago and has been abandoned for years now, leaving the community people to resort to various means of emptying their bowels.
Mallam is a suburb of the Weija-Gbawe Municipal Assembly in the Greater Accra Region, and one of the challenges facing the residents of the community is the lack of access to public toilets.
Close sources also revealed that, since it is a government built facility, caretakers are brought in by successive governments but due to unknown reasons, for some years now, it has stayed closed with no caretaker and that has brought lots of inconveniencies.
This has been a problem for the residents, especially during the night. Due to this situation, some residents have decided to wrap themselves in polythene bags and throw them in the gutters. Others also ease themselves into the gutters due to the distance of the private toilet facilities.
Also, some residents have to cross the road before they have access to the private toilet facilities in the community which poses a challenge and threat as one can be knocked down while crossing the road to ease themselves. The situation has also led to over exploitations of owners of privately owned toilet facilities.
These owners of the toilet facilities decide when to open the place for use and when to close the place.
The money charged before using the government toilet facility was much cheaper as compared to the money charged at the privately owned toilet facilities in the community, according to a resident.
Residents have been appealing to the Member of Parliament and the Assemblyman of Mallam East to do something about the situation, but to no avail.
