New environmental Sanitation policy to focus on sustainable funding-Afriyie-Ankrah

Deputy Minister for Local Government and Rural Development, Elvis Afrieyie-Ankrah has said that the new Environmental Sanitation law, soon to be approved by Cabinet, would among other things; address the issue of sustainable funding for the sector.,

He said this has been necessitated by the fact that sanitation service is capital-intensive involving expensive equipment, infrastructure and labour.

Mr. Afriyie Ankrah made this known in a speech read for him at the opening of the just ended West African Regional Sanitation and Hygiene Symposium held in Accra.

The aim of the Regional Symposium was to build on the achievements of the International Year of Sanitation held in 2008, identifying and sharing ideas on good practices in the promotion of good hygiene behavior and ensuring sustained access to sanitation in particular for the poor and vulnerable in West Africa.

It was also to identify and initiate joint action-learning as well as support the continuing process of developing a community of practice on sanitation and hygiene promotion at the West African level.

“Environmental Sanitation, particularly waste management is a major challenge for all Metropolitant, Municipal and District Assemblies, in the country, Mr. Afriyie-Ankrah noted, adding, “It is however refreshing that there is increasing commitment from government, Development Partners and indeed all stakeholders towards reversing the continuous deterioration of sanitation situations in the country.”

He said the new policy would also therefore focus on other important areas such as Capacity Development, Information Education and Communication, Legislation and Regulation, Levels of Service, Research and Development as well as Monitoring and Evaluation.

Dean of the Faculty of Civil Engineering of the Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology (KNUST), Esi Awuah on her part believes that government can save a lot of resources from health delivery if sanitation was looked at properly.

She lamented the fact that the nation spends over $ 700 million on the treatment of malaria and respiratory tract infections which are all sanitation related, while at the same time the budget for the water sector is only $30 million.

“Even water provision does not take into account, sanitation and hygiene,” she noted adding that more work needs to be done in the water and sanitation delivery sector to be able to attain the Millennium Development Goals in those sectors.

Prof. Awuah who is also the Accra Coordinator for Sustainable Water, Improves Tomorrow’s Cities Health (SWITCH), one of the Civil Society Organisations (CSOs) working in the water and sanitation sector called for a scaling up of the budgetary allocation for the water and sanitation sector, stressing that “every $100 million invested in the water and sanitation sector would yield a nine-fold dividend.”

She said when this is done, people would then be healthy to work, and the money spent on health care can also then be channeled into other productive areas that would catalyse growth.

Prof. Awuah bemoaned the fact that leadership seems not to understand the issues at stake properly and continues to tackle crucial issues in the sector poorly. “Government believes in seeing the physical facility in place,” she observed.

She noted, for instance that while governments took the right steps in establishing the Sewerage Receptive facilities in Accra and Tema, they did not make provision for skilled labour for them.

Those receptive facilities need trained sanitation engineers with Masters and Doctorate degrees on site to man them. Since those appointed to man them do not have the requisite trainings, the plants were run down in no time and have since not been revived.

She also believes that the issue of the provision of Central Sewerage Systems for cities, need to be looked at again, since they have not been working as planned for.

Participants were drawn from various CSOs and state agencies as well as Development partners working in the various West African countries to share ideas on how to scale up sanitation in communities in the sub-region to ensure good hygienic living for the people.

Some of the major sponsors of the symposium are West Africa Water Institute (WAWI), WaterAid, Unicef, Water Supply and Sanitation Council, RCN Ghana and IRC.

By: Justice Lee Adoboe