Engineer. Gabriel Engmann, the Sanitary Engineer for the Greater Accra Metropolitan Area Sanitation and Water Project (GAMA-SWP) has revealed that so far, they have connected over 15,000 with water supplies.
GAMA’s main objective of the project is to provide access to improved Sanitation in the form of household toilets, Institutional and Sanitation facilities, provision of water supply, building capacity and also improving the supply of Sanitation services under various areas they are working.
According to Mr. Engmann, so far, with regards to household toilets, they have provided over 59, 000 household toilet facilities under the institutional Sanitation sub-component, and they are constructing about 598 for schools and health care facilities in Accra and Kumasi Metropolitan areas.
“With regards to capacity building, we have done a lot of training in the various Assemblies that are benefitting from the project.
“We have trained all the environmental health officers in those Assemblies”.
“We have also revised the water policy and we are currently revising the environmental Sanitation Policy and we hope to get it done by the end of the project”.
Engineer Engmann said, based on the experience they have had on the field with regards to the construction of household toilet facilities, they have prepared or developed a manual that could help artisans, or anyone interested in constructing biodigesters can easily refer to that manual and construct for people”.
Outlining some measures taken, Engineer Engmann said, they have done some training at the courts so that people who are supposed to have toilet facilities at their homes but do not have are prosecuted and the judges prescribe some measures to assist the beneficiaries to go and own a toilet by a time frame and that has helped to build more toilet facilities.
“We have also developed a prosecution manual because, in our business and our work activities, we have encountered a lot of people who probably are proving stubborn in getting or acquiring a toilet facility. Some of those people we liaised with the environmental health officers in the various Assemblies, and some have been prosecuted. He stated
However, the main objective of the prosecution for offenders is not to jail them but to compel them to own toilets for themselves.
Engineer Engmann made the revelation at the ongoing 2023 Mole WASH Conference organized by the Ghana Coalition of Non-Governmental Organizations in Water, and Sanitation (CONIWAS), at Jirapa in the Jirapa municipality of the Upper West region.
Mole Conference is a yearly activity that brings together WASH stakeholders, from across the globe to exchange ideas on issues bothering sanitation and its related activities in the country.
Meanwhile, as part of their efforts to support the media in the WASH sector, World Vision Ghana and GAMA Sanitation and Water Project sponsored some selected journalists from the Media Coalition against Open Defecation (M-CODe) to participate at the 2023 Mole Conference in Jirapa in the Upper West region.
The theme for this year’s conference is: ‘Building Inclusive and Resilient Water, Sanitation and Hygiene System to Reach the Unserved.”
Source: Apexnewsgh.com/Ghana
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