By Nicholas Osei-Wusu
Senior Muslim leaders in the Ashanti region have entreated residents in the Greater Kumasi Metropolitan Area, particularly dwellers in the Muslim dominated and Zongo communities, to patronise government’s household toilet intervention that seeks to improve environmental sanitation and personal hygiene.
According to them, adherents of Islam are enjoined by tenets of the faith to always observe privacy while attending to nature’s call and at the same time, ensure personal and environmental hygiene.
The open defecation that has become rampant in some Zongo communities is therefore condemnable.
The call by the Muslim Leaders follows an outreach by the Ministry of Water and Sanitation and its partners to ensure that about 30,000 households in the Greater Kumasi Metropolitan Area in the Ashanti region are provided with their own toilet facilities by the end of 2024.
The Ministry of Water and Sanitation, with the support of the World Bank, is promoting the provision of household toilet facilities among Ghanaians on a pilot basis.
The project, which started with the Greater Accra Metropolitan Area, has been upscaled to cover the eight Metropolitan, Municipalities and Districts constituting the Greater Kumasi Metropolitan Area in the Ashanti region.
The ultimate objective of the project partners is to provide 30,000 households in this area with decent biodigester water closet toilet facilities at a highly subsidized cost.
One of the beneficiary administrative areas in the enclave is the Asokore Mampong Municipality which incidentally has the largest Zongo and Muslim communities at Asawase, Aboabo Numbers One and Two, Sawaba and Akorem.
It is estimated that many households in these local communities do not have their own toilet facilities to guarantee their privacy.
For any interested household, the government of Ghana and the World Bank will take up 70 percent of the entire cost from the cubicle construction, tiling, provision of the ceramic seats to hand washing at a cost of one thousand 200 Ghana Cedis while those who already have their building in place, their counterpart funding will be 700 Ghana Cedis.
Towards greater adoption and participation of the initiative by the Zongo and Muslims dominated communities, the local implementation team took advantage of the Eid ul-Adha open air prayers to promote it.
The Executive Secretary of the Ashanti Region Council of Ulama and Imams, Ustaz Ahmed Seidu, said he has personally patronised the facility for his household in keeping to one of the important requirements of the Islamic faith, which is hygiene and privacy in attending to nature’s call.
Ustaz Seidu noted, “In Islam, if one wants to ease himself, he has to get an enclosed place where he has some measure of secrecy. If people go on defecating outside, it tells you that the community is not enlightened.”
For his part, the Translator at the Central Mosque at Asawase, Ustaz Mohammed described open defecation as practiced in some Muslim communities as anti-Islam hence people should take advantage of the initiative to own their private toilet facilities.
He advised, “I consider this government initiative as very important. What has been observed in our communities is that some people openly defecate into drains and when it rains, the drains are blocked causing flooding which eventually comes back to affect us.”
The Asokore Mampong and Tafo Project Team Coach, Mr. Marwan Iddi Laminu, told GBC News that so far only 237 households in the Asokore Mampong Municipality have patronised the initiative and said it is very low.
“A project which is supposed to last three years and we’ve constructed just 227 toilets is not enough. We think we can do more,” Mr. Laminu said.