The Environmental Officer for the Cape Coast Metropolitan Assembly (CCMA), Mr Iddris Shani, has advised homeowners in the Metropolis without toilet facilities to immediately make provisions for some or face the full rigors of the law next year.
In an interview, he said, “beginning January 2019, the Assembly will rigorously enforce all sanitation regulations to effectively rid the Metropolis of all insanitary conditions to befit its status as “the tourism hub in Ghana.”
“We urge landlords of households, which have no toilets to provide them or else the law will catch up with them.”
“We will arrest and prosecute all persons found to have contravened the laws without qualms to one’s social status, ethnicity or political persuasions. Our duty is to keep the city clean and punish offenders to serve as deterrent to others,” he warned.
According to him, the perennial incidence of cholera in Cape Coast, which is the hub of education and tourism in Ghana, casts a slur on the positive image of the Metropolis where residents were expected to exhibit better behavioural practices.
The move is therefore geared towards sanitizing the tourists’ city on other environmental issues and to address all concerns to attract more tourists to the area.
In addition to that, Mr Shani said, a sanitation task force made up of security services and environmental officers would soon be inaugurated to help achieve the feat.
The sanitation taskforce will collaborate with other agencies to scale up public education and clampdown on indiscriminate dumping of refuses and arrest people who engaged in sand winning to protect the environment.
The team is also expected to mobilize the indigenes to embark on regular clean-up exercise in collaboration with the appropriate institutions in response to President Akufo-Addo’s call on Ghanaians to maintain clean environment.
Their work, according to Mr Shani was pivotal to achieving the Sustainable Development Goal (SDGs) on sanitation and environment, – “Ensure availability and sustainable management of water and sanitation for all.”
According to him about 5.5 million representing 19 percent of Ghana’s population practiced open defecation, which promotes faecal-related diseases like cholera, diarrhoea and typhoid.
The Environmental Officer stated that CCMA remained poised to achieving 100 percent Open Defecation Free (ODF) and urged stakeholders to encourage behavioural change to end defecating in the open, which was deemed extremely harmful to public health.
He cautioned residents not to litter the environment and dump refuse into the gutters, adding that anyone caught would be dealt with according to the bye-laws of the Assembly.
He said poor environmental sanitation accounts for 70 per cent of outpatient diseases of hospitals and other health facilities in the country.
Mr Shani also noted that delivery of environmental sanitation services was capital intensive and therefore required adequate funding and investment for its sustainability and the
Assembly had resolved to adopt more pragmatic measures to deliver its mandate in providing sanitation services.
He said improving sanitation was certainly the surest way to improve the health, social and economic developments of the country.
