To assist facilitate the UN-Water Global Assessment and Analysis of Sanitation and Drinking Water (GLAAS) implementation and country level consultations in Africa, the World Health Organisation (WHO), is working closely with the Pan African Inter-governmental Agency, Water and Sanitation for Africa (WSA).
WSA will lead the country level process in Ghana and 19 other African countries where they have field staff, while WHO, would support the process through its own country offices in 10 more countries, to make the total 30
Large sums of money allocated to five metropolitan assemblies in 2010 under the Second Urban Environmental Sanitation Project (UESP II) were used to pay consultants rather than for the project, the Public Accounts Committee of Parliament (PAC) learnt yesterday.
A number of people at Sang, capital town of newly created Mion District in the Northern Region have expressed worry about the lack of potable water and very limited access to sanitation. The situation is likely to aggravate during the coming harmattan season if swift and special attention is not given to the predominantly farming community. Water is so scarce that the people share the resource in the local dam with animals.
Mr Benjamin Arthur, Executive Secretary, Coalition of NGOs in Water and Sanitation (CONIWAS), has appealed to traditional authorities to use traditional values and custom to promote sanitation.
He appealed to them to revive cultural values which made open defecation a taboo to help reduce the practice in the country.
Mr Arthur said this at a day’s seminar for selected “community champions” in the Volta Region on scaling up improved sanitation services through the use of social norms.
WASHCost - a US$ 14.5m, five-year project funded by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, and implemented by the IRC International Water and Sanitation Centre (IRC) - has been a bold, global attempt to gain accurate knowledge on disaggregated water, sanitation and hygiene (WASH) costs in rural and peri-urban areas.
The Vice Chancellor of the University of Energy and Natural Resources, Professor (Mrs) Esi Awuah has stated that lack of knowledge in the WASH sector, coupled with corruption and nepotism has been the cause of poor service delivery in the Water, Sanitation and Hygiene (WASH) sector in Ghana.
Kotei, a dual faced community within the Kumasi Metropolis has been beneficiaries of the Water and Sanitation for Urban Poor (WSUP) initiative since 2010. The Community is two-faced because one part of the town is rural and lacks basic social amenities, whilst the other side is the exact opposite of this with well laid out environment.
WSUP, a United Kingdom based non-for-profit company is a partnership organization made up of partners from the Academia, private sector and NGO. WSUP Work with local service providers, thus agencies and institution mandated by the constitution to deliver service at the community level. WSUP is therefore working with the Kumasi Metropolitan Assembly (KMA), to provide improved and dignified sanitation services delivery to the people of Kotei community.
Mr Joseph Yaw Donkor of the Waste Management Department (WMD) of Kumasi Metropolitan Assembly (KMA) has hinted that the Assembly would ensure that landlords provide toilet facilities in their properties to raid the city of filth.
This he said, would be done through intensive education and sensitisation on sanitation issues.
Mr Donkor gave the assurance on Thursday at the Noda Hotel in Fumesua, near Kumasi at the 24th Mole Conference organised by the Coalition of NGOs In Water and Sanitation (CONIWAS).
Although several sanitation technologies and financing options are available to Africa, credible business models to take advantage of these are non-existent.
Further, even though demand-led approach to sanitation looks very promising, it is plagued by limitations and lack of knowledge in terms of context, scale and sustainability, while too little attention has been given to on-site sanitation, despite the fact that about 80 per cent of Africa’s population relies on this.
The Senior Presidential Advisor, Paul Victor Obeng, yesterday, August 14, 2013 opened Ghana’s longest running water, sanitation and hygiene conference at Fumesua, near Kumasi in the Ashanti Region, with a call on the about 140 participants to focus on building new coalitions of those who are willing to change the country’s fortunes.
To him, such action will enable appreciation of Ghana’s limitations, codify the country’s sanitation challenges and apply appropriate technologies to improve access to sanitation services.
