Two thousand households in Accra to benefit from toilet project
Two thousand households in the Greater Accra Metropolitan Area (GAMA) have registered to benefit from the government’s initiative to build subsidised toilets for households without the facilities.
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Some 425 toilets have already been completed in 11 metropolises, municipalities and districts.
Breakdown
So far, 26 have been built in the Adenta municipality, 57 in the Accra metropolis, 101 in the Ashaiman municipality, 19 at Abokobi, eight at Sowutuom and 19 at Pokuase.
Others are five in La Dadekotopon, 48 in La Nkwantanang, 39 at Old Teshie and 109 at Zinginshore, a slum community in Tema.
At a community engagement at Nima, Accra, at the weekend, the Project Coordinator, Mr George Asiedu, said the project was aimed at meeting the sanitation challenges that had been confronting the country.
He said some of the registered households were yet to complete the payment of their counterpart fees, adding that the project would start for those households as soon as they completed payment.
Eliminating open defecation
The initiative is targeting 20,000 households as part of a project to eliminate open defecation.
Under the project, toilet facilities suitable for the various households in the selected communities will be constructed for interested households at half the cost, estimated to be GH¢4,000.
A collaboration with the World Bank, the project forms part of the implementation of the GAMA-Sanitation and Water Project (SWP) Rapid Response Initiative (RRI).
Improving sanitation
The GAMA-SWP is targeted at improving sanitation and water supply and strengthening the management of environmental sanitation, with emphasis on low-income urban areas within the GAMA.
He said the project would focus on liquid waste management to prevent open defecation and environmental pollution that were harmful to the health of the nation.
“We want to address the issue of poor environmental sanitation by providing toilet facilities for houses at half price to solve the problems of using the public toilet and open defecation,” he said.
Encouragement
He said the initiative would continue till the end of the year and, therefore, encouraged the public and landlords to ensure that they bought into it to get access to the facilities.
“If you do not have the money outright, we have a system where one can contribute over a period of time and after the payment the facility will be installed,” he said.
For his part, the GAMA Coordinator, Mr Graham Sarbrah, said the project started over a year ago and the feedback had been encouraging.
“We are now going from door to door to check if people have toilets and to inform them of the initiative,” he said.
He said the AMA would continue to whip up people’s interest in the initiative by creating awarenesss.
