By Nathaniel Nartey
This year’s World Toilet Day in Ghana is being marked in Kumasi with a ceremony to launch the construction phase of the Greater Kumasi Metropolitan Area Sanitation and Water Project. This is partly because open defecation is prevailing in one-time Garden City of West Africa as other regions make gains in reducing the menace.
A recent study by the Ministry of Sanitation and Water Resources in the Kumasi Metropolitan Area revealed that more than 3,570 of over 7,000 houses sampled did not have any form of toilet, while 6 % of the ones that have toilet were non-functional.
Meanwhile, Nandom remains the only district to attain Open defecation free status. It is, for this reason, the Ministry of Sanitation and Water Resources under the project is providing subsidized toilet facilities at a cost of GHC1,200 instead of GHC 4,000 for residents in Kumasi.
Convener of the Media Coalition Against Open defecation, Emmanuel Addai advised residents in Kumasi to take advantage of the subsided toilet facilities under the project and appealed to the government to do more in that regard.
“M-CODe wishes to encourage every qualified household to seize the opportunity to even get more than the target number. Every city or town in Ghana would wish to have this opportunity so if Kumasi has been chosen today, the choice is theirs to take now,” according to the Convener of the Media Coalition Against Open Defecation Emmanuel Addai.
