Cape Coast, Nov. 20, - Hundreds
of school Pupils in the Cape Coast Metropolis on Sunday defied their usual
church service and marched through the principal streets to re-echo the need to
end the menace of open defecation.
Supervised by dozens of teachers
dressed in white T-Shirts and Blue Jeans, they marched from the forecourt of
the Cape Coast Castle through Gyegyem, Brofoyedur and Amissaekyir and converged at the Trinity
Methodist Church at Amanful.
Wearing their uniforms and outing
dresses, the pupils distributed flyers and held placards some of which read
"Toilet should be accessible to children, Ghana needs national policy on
open defecation, Over 3,600 children in Ghana die from poor sanitation, Make
toilet an individual priority", among others.
The accompanying brass band music
drew scores of people to join them while other on-lookers lined up to catch a
glimpse.
The March formed part of
activities marking the World Toilet Day, set aside by the United Nations (UN)
for countries to undertake various advocacy and awareness raising activities to
remind citizens of the need to own and use hygienic toilets in their homes.
The commemoration in the Cape
Coast Metropolis was aimed at reaching out to low income urban communities to
mobilise people to support the toilet campaign, says Mr Idrisu Saani, Environmental Health Officer
of the Cape Coast Metropolitan Assembly (CCMA) .
He described the sanitation
situation in the Metropolis as "disgusting" saying it needed
collective efforts to remedy the situation.
According to him, open defecation costs Ghana over 79 million
dollars a year and therefore urged all to support Government to sustain the
campaign against open defecation, adding that resources for the campaign needed
to be allocated to where they were most needed.
The CCMA Environmental Officer
said the Assembly had resolved to develop low-cost and environmentally-friendly
household toilets to help end open defecation in the area.
He indicated that the
“Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) on Sanitation could once again be missed if
desirable, environmentally-friendly and affordable toilet technologies were not
developed and promoted for use among inhabitants in rural, peri-urban and the
urban areas”.
The goal was to radically
increase access to household facilities across the Municipality , especially in
the slums and rural communities.
Ghanaians must build, own and use
improved toilet facilities at home as a means to ending open defecation, he
stressed adding that “We want our people and institutions to understand that
the moment somebody practices open defecation everybody’s life is
endangered".
Mr Samuel Agyekum, Sarpong
Programmes Manager of ProNet, described the Metropolis as the tourism hub of
the Region and so the people should ensure tidy surroundings always.
He said, a clean country would
attract investors who would contribute greatly to its socio-economic growth.
The lack of toilet facilities in
homes and schools, he noted, could compound the sanitation challenges
confronting the country as environmental challenges was fast becoming endemic
hence the urgent need to decisively deal with them.
GNA
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