Mr Vanguard Bortie, the District Environment and Sanitation Officer of Builsa North in the Upper East Region, has urged district assemblies to play complementary roles in enforcing sanitation by-laws to keep the communities clean.
He said though some district assemblies were doing well in formulating by-laws on sanitation, the work of the environment and sanitation staff would be easier when it was complemented by the security and sanitation courts, to ensure enforcement.
“When these complementary roles are absent, it becomes risky for one stakeholder to operate and arrest defaulters of sanitation,” he said.
Speaking in an interview with the Ghana News Agency at Sandema, Mr Bortier said the importance of education and advocacy were critical to behavioural change promotion in communities and advised stakeholders not to relent on their efforts in educating the public.
He said access to household toilets, water and sanitation had to be attached to behavioural change promotion in order to ensure effective Water, Sanitation and Hygiene (WASH) services in communities.
“If you provide potable water to communities and fail to sensitise the people well on other aspects of sanitation, including transportation of the water to homes and its eventual usage, it could also be a danger,” he said.
He said the transmission of disease causing agents through faecal matter was one cause of tropical diseases and called on the assemblies to collaborate with partners in water delivery to help make sanitation coverage holistic.
On access to household toilets, he said the challenges some tenants faced with their landlords in the provision of toilets were enormous and advised those in such situations to amicably solve the issue to improve on situation.
