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 Assembly lacks public toilet facilities.
This lack comes as a result of the abandonment of a storey building toilet facility built for the Community some years ago. According to sources the toilet facility was built some 36 years ago and has since been abandoned leaving the community residents to resort to various means of emptying their bowels.
Close sources revealed that, since it is a government built facility, care takers are usually 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. They also mentioned that the building after its abandonment has developed cracks and pose a threat if it is not renovated before it is opened to the public again.
This has been a problem for the residents, especially during the night. Due to this situation, some residents have opted for the rather unhealthy method of using black polyethene bags to dispose off their human waste. They dispose these polythene- bound faecal wastes into gutters and drains while others opt for an open defecation practice into the drains and gutters in the community.
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 in the community.
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.
