NGO calls for re-initiation of the sanitation day activities

By Lawrencia Akoto Frempong

Kpone, Jan. 27, GNA – Mr Benjamin Kwame Opare, the Founder of the Benemef Foundation, a non-governmental organisation on sanitation, has called on President John Dramani Mahama to reinitiate the sanitation day exercise to ensure a cleaner country.

He said the sanitation day exercise was observed every first Saturday of the month, during which residents cleaned their communities while Members of Parliament and regional ministers supervised the exercise in their areas.

Mr Opare noted that only a few places in the country could boost of proper and clean environment with good drainage systems.

He said areas such as Kpone, Ashaiman, Tema and others had dirty surroundings due to plastic pollution and bad drainage systems which usually caused damage and displacement of properties during the rainy season.

He was worried that drains that were purposely constrained for liquid waste had now become refuse dumps for some residents, leading to blockage of the water flow and breeding grounds for mosquitoes and rodents.

Mr Opare, in an interview with the Ghana News Agency (GNA), said countries such as Kenya and Tanzania had clean environments because the governments had put measures in place to ensure a clean and healthy country.

He stated that these sanitation issues increase the spread of communicable diseases such as cholera and diarrhea, especially among children and the aged in the communities.

He suggested that cameras should be fixed at vantage points to help apprehend and punish perpetrators or offenders who litter the environment, to serve as a deterrent to others.

Mr Opare further called on the President to empower agencies and institutions such as the Environmental Protection Agency and the environmental health officials in the various Assemblies with the needed logistics for them to effectively discharge their work.

He also noted that religious leaders could also be sanitation advocates by preaching about sanitation and its related issues to their members, as cleanliness was next to godliness.

He pleaded with the government to employ more people to work in the sanitation sector and organise public education through the various Metropolis Municipal and District Assemblies (MMDAs) for Ghana to be one of the cleanest countries in Africa.

GNA