Pouring cold water on hard-crust sanitation rock
Another holiday is around the corner. Many of these holidays come and go; it’s usually hard to figure out their essence beyond the knowledge that it is just another day that Ghana rests. From what Ghana rests is never fully made clear. But we take the holiday anyway and just blow it recklessly. Whether productivity drops or doesn’t drop is not factored into the national equation. Folks, a holiday is a holiday! Right? Wrong!
This July 1st marks 53 years since Ghana completely yanked its tired umbilical cord colonial self from the tight apron strings of Elizabeth Queen of England. Yes, 6th March at Independence was important but the real deal was Republic Day July 1st 1960 when Nkrumah gained full executive powers. You see, Independence was only the first step; it served as a sort of trial period to see if we can establish what in Obama-speak was our “Yes We Can”. After a three-year text-run, with Nkrumah still jittery and wearing out Madam Elizabeth, she told Ghana, “Yes You Should.” And we did!
But for the past decades, Ghana has been sinking in one particular nauseating area of our national life. It is in the matter of sanitation. It appears that the more super-Christian and religiously-pretentious we become, the more we drop into the gutter in the matter of sanitation. It doesn’t make sense at all that although we say proudly that ‘Cleanliness is next to Godliness’ and we seem to push for closeness to God, yet we embrace the very opposite of cleanliness. As we celebrate the true essence of Ghana as a Republic, with full stature to stand on our feet, the ugly matter of our sanitation must be addressed urgently.
The sanitation matter made it boldly into the 2008 NDC Manifesto. Three-and-a-half years came and went and that promise was left unfulfilled. Let’s just say that President Mills died so out of respect for the dead, we agree to bury the 2008 sanitation promise. Let’s also just say that the last six months of the Mills administration, which was served by President John Dramani Mahama, was non-scoring because it was under trying circumstances since we had never had a sitting President die before (Eh, if there is a ‘sitting’ President, can there be a ‘sleeping’ or ‘standing’ or ‘squatting’ President?). And then there was also the wild matter of election campaign 2012.
But now, President Mahama is half-way into the first year of his own presidency (pink-sheets or no pink-sheets). Yet, this country is not scratching the surface of the sanitation matter at all. It is as if we have gone to sleep about solving it. Knowing the way our politics play out, if any hard decisions are to be taken and implemented, there is only a small window of opportunity—the first two years of an administration. After the two years, campaigning for the next elections begin in earnest. Political campaigning is taken to mean that government should ‘see no evil; hear no evil’ and adopt a nonchalant attitude toward tough decisions and those who audaciously flout our laws for fear of being punished at the voting booth.
Sanitation as a national crisis:
2008 was marked worldwide as the International Year of Sanitation. That year, Ghana declared sanitation as a national crisis. It has been five year since 2008 and sanitation is still a national crisis. When something is a national crisis for so long, what does that mean? Does it suggest that people accept the abnormal as normal and become very comfortable with the status quo and as a result, stop trying to resolve the crisis?
What does one call an unsolved crisis? A calamity? A catastrophe? Is a catastrophe or calamity worse than a crisis or these are just synonyms—meaning the same thing? A crisis serves the purpose of calling attention to an emergency and a need to tackle a problem with urgency. You don’t waste time; you don’t find excuses to delay. You take actions; the right actions with a problem-solving determination. When the problem is not addressed and solved, it becomes like a hard-crusted rock.
Student Industrial Attachment Programme:
This past week, I was present at an event that left me with unanswered questions about our approach to resolving Ghana’s sanitation crisis. It was at the launch of the Student Industrial Attachment Programme. It was an occasion to do one of the usual things—a public fun fair, programme launch, sword-cutting, inauguration, and the likes. This particular programme launch was to outdoor what I consider to be a classic sanitation solution brain-wave of no consequence. The target was mostly tertiary education students; to arrange for them to go on attachments/internships in their communities, especially with the Metropolitan, Municipal and District Assemblies throughout the country.
The grand dream of this new programme is to nurture these student interns during the long vacation to become sanitation ambassadors who can influence their communities at the lowest levels of our society. As I sat through the programme with some hundreds of young adult students, my own brain went into an over-drive. The students asked questions that clearly indicated that their interest was not in sanitation at all. Their interest was in what they can get—some money in their pockets! These are idle young people who need something to do. In that regard, such a programme may be a blessing—to keep them busy so the devil will not find need of them.
But listening to the ‘brains’ behind the concept explain it left me with a funny feeling. How well has this programme been thought through? Would this become one of the many politically-motivated nine-day-wonder programmes of no consequence that simply bleeds Ghana of more and more cash without making any impact? Besides, there is such an eerie resemblance of this freshly-minted student long-vac attachment programme with the ailing National Youth Employment Programme. Why must the Ministry of Local Government and Rural Development set up a parallel programme without any linkages to National Youth Employment? Well, I say—young adult students, rush to get placement on this thing; make some quick petty cash and just may be, become good sanitation ambassadors.
But the truth is that as Ghana’s sanitation problem is of a high-octane crisis nature, the Ministry of Local Government should not waste our time by spending precious resources on a brain wave. After all, there is a National Environmental Sanitation Policy with its accompanying Communication Strategy that are crying to be implemented systematically. Introducing a vacation programme for students that do not appear to have any connection with the implementation of what we’re supposed to be doing from a strategic vantage point is not fair to the problem. It is nothing beyond pouring precious ice water onto our hard-crust sanitation problem.
President Mahama, when time comes to evaluate the Minister of Local Government, Mr Akwasi Oppong-Fosu, in the true spirit of transparency and accountability, please make him properly explain where the long-vac programme belongs in the scheme of things to solve the national sanitation crisis, how much money and other resources are spent on it, and also measure the impact of the programme. Not solving Ghana’s sanitation crisis raises red flags about our state of independence. For a kicker, it is also a violation of the 1992 Constitution.
Written by Dr. Doris Yaa Dartey
The WatchWoman Column, The Weekly Spectator
Email: [email protected]