By Fatima Anafu-Astanga
Bolgatanga, Sept.14, GNA – The Media Coalition Against Open Defecation (M-CODe) has called on stakeholders in the Upper East Region to join forces with the regional advocacy group to fight against open defecation.
Mr Francis Ameyibor, the M-CODe National Convenor, who made the appeal, noted the urgent need for stakeholder collaboration in the region to ensure that it attained open defecation-free status by 2030, the target period for ending the practice globally.
Mr. Ameyibor, in an interview with the Ghana News Agency in Bolgatanga, noted that the support of key personalities in the region, including the Regional Minister, traditional and religious leaders, youth groups, and women groups, was critical to ending open defecation.
He also tagged the work of Regional, Metropolitan, Municipal, and District Environmental Health Officers in prosecuting offenders as very crucial in the fight, and stressed that “apart from appealing to the consciences of people to stop the practice, the prosecution of offenders would serve as a deterrent to others”.
The M-CODe National Convenor also stressed the need for Regional and District Coordinating Councils, Presiding members, MMDCEs, and the Environmental Protection Agency as co-partners whose actions and inactions could either enhance or otherwise undermine the advocacy against open defecation.
Mr. Ameyibor noted that to win the war against open defecation and related poor sanitation practices, “we must adopt an all-hands-on deck approach to tackle the menace head-on”.
He reminded the public that open defecation was linked to sanitation-related diseases, which had consequences on health, productivity, and socio-economic development of the country.
He advised journalists to give priority to sanitation-related stories to address the menace, stressing that the issue of poor sanitation was growing from bad to worse.
Mr Ameyibor also encouraged M-CODe Upper East Regional Branch members to enhance their advocacy for the needed progress in all areas of national life.
“We should not be ashamed or afraid to name and shame communities in the region that had gained notoriety for practicing open defecation,” he said.
He said the objectives of the establishment of the M-CODe were to develop the capacity of the media as advocates to improve sanitation and hygiene and support public sensitization.
Meanwhile, M-CODe Upper East Regional Convenor, Ms Fatima Astanga, advised landlords who still had not provided toilet facilities in their houses in the Bolgatanga Municipality and beyond to do so to stop tenants from rising at dawn to go into bushes and incomplete buildings in the communities to attend to nature’s call.
She said that M-CODe in the region would soon name and shame people caught in open defecation.
GNA