BY 2015, Ghana and other developing countries are expected to halve the proportion of their population without sanitation as part of meeting the targets of the Millennium Development Goal (MDG) on environmental sustainability.
To meet this target, most interventions have been focused mainly on improving sanitation at public places, such as the provision of community and household latrines, the cleaning of streets and markets and the provision of safe water sources.
However, this goal cannot be achieved if the schools, which are the places where children spend most of their time lack improved sanitation facilities, potable water and are unable to manage their waste properly.
The Yendi Municipality in the Northern Region is one of the places in the country where many basic schools lack sanitation facilities and the problem is a setback to the municipality’s drive to achieve total sanitation.
According to the Ghana Education Service (GES), out of the 190 schools in the Yendi Municipality, only 64 have latrines, 72 of them have hand washing facilities and just about 20 have boreholes.
The rest are without these facilities and one can imagine the hell that the pupils and authorities in these schools go through. Open defecation and haphazard urinating are the norm in such schools, a situation which leads to the outbreak of diarrhoea and other diseases.
Again, these schools have no source of safe water for drinking and hand washing. Some of the latrines and urinals are in poor condition and waste collection and disposal are also poorly managed.
In view of the situation, the Community Life Improvement Programme (CLIP) of the Ghana Developing Communities Association (GDCA), a non-governmental organisation (NGO), has organised a forum for duty bearers and citizens, including students and teachers, to deliberate on how to improve sanitation at basic schools in Yendi.
The discussion centred on the theme: “Analysing the sanitation policy and calling on all to wake up to their responsibility.”
Addressing the forum, the Planning Officer for the Yendi Municipal Assembly, Alhaji Mohammed Shaibu, said the assembly had an elaborate plan to construct more latrines and also rehabilitate existing ones that were in deplorable conditions in the schools.
He, however, said that the assembly was faced with some setbacks, notably the unavailability of funds to vigorously construct adequate sanitary facilities not only in the schools, but also in other places in the municipality.
Alhaji Shaibu said ideally each school should have separate facilities for both boys and girls, but noted that due to the lack of funds, the assembly was sometimes compelled to construct shared latrines for both sexes.
Mr Shaibu mentioned the encroachment of school lands as another factor, which impeded the process of constructing latrines for basic schools.
According to him, there is not much space on some of the school lands to accommodate such facilities because the surrounding communities had built houses on school lands.
He also lamented the pressure put on school sanitation facilities, following the shared usage of such facilities between the schools and nearby communities.
Alhaji Shaibu, however, stated that despite the challenges, he was optimistic that sanitation in basic schools in Yendi could be enhanced greatly in the near future.
He said currently, the assembly through the European Union (EU) and UNICEF’s IWASH programme, was providing latrines, boreholes and hand-washing facilities to some schools in the municipality.
The forum also discussed the Schools Health Education Programme (SHEF) being operated by the GES and how effective it was in enhancing sanitation in basic schools in Yendi.
The Programme Co-ordinator of the SHEF in the Yendi Municipality, Mr Zakaria Abukari, explained that the GES was hindered by the same challenges that the assembly was facing in maintaining sanitation.
They included lack of funds to supply sanitation facilities, inadequate space for construction, abuse of school latrines by communities, open defecation around school premises and inadequate resources to carry out monitoring.
He said, however, that some progress was being made, citing a collaboration between the GES, the assembly, the European Union, UNICEF, Catholic Relief Services and other partners, to provide latrines in schools, boreholes and distribution of hand washing facilities, cleaning equipment and some litter bins.
Mr Zakaria said “ensuring safe sanitation in schools is a collective responsibility: The school authorities, pupils, parents, the assembly, the GES, Town and Country Planning, opinion leaders, environmental health unit, among others, must all play a part.”
The Co-ordinator of CLIP, Mr Adam Illiasu, stated that the sanitation dialogue formed part of the Community Managed Livelihood Improvement (CMLI), under the Empowerment for Life (E4L) programme of the GDCA.
“It is our hope that such dialogues will serve as a catalyst to promote and facilitate the institutionalisation of a sustainable financing system for school sanitation and engender positive behavioural change in schoolchildren towards good sanitation,” he stated.
Mr Illiasu said in spite of Ghana’s elaborate policy on environmental sanitation, “access is still very low, funding is ridiculously low and sanitation-related diseases with their attendant social and economic costs were extremely high.”
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