William Nlanjerbor Jalulah, Upper East Regional GJA Chairman
Journalists in the Upper East Region have resolved to step up their efforts in the campaign against open defecation, which is on the rise in the region, posing environmental and health challenges to the people.
The Regional Chairman of the Ghana Journalists Association (GJA), William Nlanjerbor Jalulah, is therefore appealing to all other professional bodies and the public to join the crusade against this rather unfortunate practice, which sometimes leads to the outbreak of diseases such as cholera, typhoid and other diarrhoea diseases.
Mr. Jalulah was speaking at Bolgatanga during the Upper East Regional launch of the Media Coalition against Open Defecation (M-CODe), a campaign being sponsored by World Vision and United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF).
M-CODe, which was first launched in September 2018, is being constituted in all the 16 regions to, among others, launch a relentless war against open defecation across the country, and campaign for improved sanitation and increased access to potable water.
It came to light during the programme in Bolgatanga that only about eight percent of the entire population in the Upper East Region have access to decent toilet facilities, making it the region with the lowest toilet to resident ratio in the country.
It was further revealed that only 1,103 of the 2,313 communities in the region have been certified as Open Defecation Free (ODF), which means that some 1,210 communities are seriously engaged in open defecation.
All hands on deck
It is for this reason that the Regional GJA Chairman is asking the media, traditional leaders, religious leaders, civil society organisations and all relevant partners to put their shoulders to the wheel in the fight against open defecation.
“The fight against open defecation must be collective, collective in the sense that health issues affect everybody. We are all in this society, and we know what is happening. The fight in the Upper East Region would be intense. As a region, it calls for everyone’s hands on deck for us to collectively achieve this target of eradicating the OD situation in our region”, Mr. Jalulah stated.
The Regional Chairman for the GJA, who doubles as the General Manager for A1 Radio, a subsidiary of the Agreed Best Communication Limited, charged the 15 MDAs across the region to scale up efforts aimed at eradicating OD.
“The MDAs have a lot of work to do. Over the years, I know that they have done their bit, but had it been that it was sustainable enough, for me, we would have ended it. Once in a while, we see them make efforts to fight OD through the Environmental Health Unit, but it has not been sustainable enough,” he added.
Crude methods
An official of the Environmental Health Sanitation Unit of the Bolgatanga Municipal Assembly, Mumuni Razak Apkaribo, disclosed that some of the residents in government bungalows, especially the junior staff quarters in Bolgatanga, are still using a rather crude method of human waste disposal, which is the pan latrine system.
Mr. Apkaribo explained that while some of the residents of the bungalows had renovated and installed modern toilet facilities, others still rely on the pan latrines.
“This means that, on a daily basis, some contracted staff of the Assembly have to go around the pits and evacuate the human waste materials deposited into the pans, and because the Assembly is unable to provide gloves and other sanitary materials for the workers, sometimes they do not go to dispose of the waste. So, it has become a situation where the occupants of the bungalows now pay the workers as and when they need their services,” he further revealed.
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