Report calls for govt, donor funding flow to manage water, sanitation and hygiene
A report on budget tracking and analysis for the Bongo and Kassena Nankana West districts in the Upper East Region has recommended the need for government and donor funding to be released in a timeous manner for the execution of water, sanitation, and hygiene (WASH) projects.
The six-page report also recommended that district assemblies should explore more avenues to increase internally generated funds (IGF) and to set up data bases of taxpayers for tracking of tax evaders to improve revenue generation.
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WaterAid uses budget tracking and analysis activities to improve the accountability and responsiveness of governments and service providers in the (WASH) sector.
The system also serves as an evidence-based tool for advocacy and influencing key stakeholders and the government to prioritise WASH issues in budget and development plans.
At a WASH dissemination workshop in Bolgatanga, a consultant to WaterAid Ghana, Mr Nicholas Adamtey, explained that “when it comes to sustainable funding for WASH activities, IGF is the best” and expressed regret that there was virtually no allocation from the meagre IGFs of the two districts to fund WASH related activities, making the sustainability of funding WASH services a huge challenge.
The workshop was organised by WaterAid Ghana with support from Global Affairs Canada as part of WaterAid's WASH for Public Health project.
According to Mr Adamtey, the report also identified the need for the formation of water management bodies based on expertise and not on political considerations to avoid poor management of WASH facilities.
He suggested the need for the government and the various district assemblies to systematically increase funding to provide WASH services at both national and district levels.
He said that would ultimately enable the country to get closer to achieving the Sustainable Development Goal Six “which prescribes the provision of clean water and sanitation services for people by the year 2030.”
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The Programme Manager, Technical, of WaterAid, Mr Sampson Tettey, told the participants to critically think about the need to ensure effective monitoring of WASH projects to help accelerate development in the various district assemblies in the region.
The Upper East Regional Coordinating Director, Alhaji Mahamudu Azonko, observed that the WaterAid budget tracking exercise had come at a time when the government was introducing various systems such as the Ghana Integrated Financial Management System (GIFMIS) to ensure that public funds were not misappropriated.
Open forum
The workshop brought together budget officers, planning officers, gender desk officers, environmental health and sanitation officers, coordinating directors from the two districts and representatives from the Community Water and Sanitation Agency (CWSA), Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), among other relevant institutions.
Participants were of the general view that monitoring was key to ensuring that WASH projects in beneficiary communities were not abandoned.
They further indicated that even if communities were provided with adequate logistics to implement WASH activities, the absence of monitoring would render such activities ineffective.