WaterAid leads campaign for proper sanitation

Some communities in the Dangme West district of the Greater Accra Region have launched a vigorous sanitation campaign as a result of the lack of sanitation facilities in the district.

The campaign follows the introduction of the Community led Total Sanitation (CLTS) approach in the communities by Water Aid Ghana, a Non Governmental Organization in water and sanitation sector as part of its aims to improve access to water for over 90,000 people in the rural areas of the country within the next five years.

According to WaterAid, the communities in the Dangme West District which hitherto were highly affected by diseases such as diarrhea as a result of poor sanitary conditions such as open defecation and drinking of contaminated water have through the CLTS acquire several toilet and water facility.

According to an official in charge of hygiene for PRONET, an implementing partner of Water Aid Ghana, Derrick Abandoh, who took the Ghana Watson Journalist Network (GWJN) round the communities in district explained that the CLTS was a process of inspiring and empowering the communities to stop open defecation through stimulating a collective sense of disgust and shame as they created negative impact in the community.

To this end, he noted that, these communities who were taken through sensitization programmes on the negative impact of the non-sanitary behaviours and have therefore responded to the call shifted their attention to a more proper means of sanitation, thereby building their private toilet facilities.

Some of the communities visited were Gozakope, Volivo, Djogbedzi and Kpognunor all in the Dangme West district. At Gozakope, a community with population of about 344, 18 private toilet facilities have been built.

According to the Elder of the community Nelson Goza, the community was facing several challenges emanating from diseases due to the lack of such facilities “we ease ourselves in the surrounding bushes and that make this community sometime smell bad” he revealed.

He added that with the introduction of the CLTS approach and sensitization in the community, they have seen the need and have appreciated that individuals can own such facilities by themselves saying, the exercise have highly improved sanitation in the community.

“Formally we were used to being attacked by strange disease until we were made to be aware that those diseases come as a result of our way of living’ he said.

He however noted that another challenge facing the community is how to avert the difficulty in getting potable water since currently the entire community have no choice that to share a stagnant water with their cattle.

The community elder revealed that activities of the Free Zones company in the have polluted their major source of drinking water, river Kasu which has been turned bitter and those who drink are affected with a strange disease that causes them to urinate blood and skin itch.

Meanwhile, the PRONET official in charge of hygiene Derick Abandoh in an interview with journalists, hinted that the only borehole in the community needed an iron treatment plant to treat iron chemicals in the water, adding that, the NGOs had secured such facility and would be installed soon.

“For instance at Volivo, the borehole has been fixed with iron treatment plant and in it is in full operation,” he pointed out.