By Edmund Smith-Asante, ACCRA
 |
| Mr David Duncan |
There has been no improvement in sanitation
coverage in the country for three years because neither the government nor the
public has given priority to issues of sanitation in the country, the Chief of
Water, Sanitation and Hygiene (WASH) at UNICEF, Mr David Duncan, has stated.
Indicating that Ghana’s unenviable tag stemmed
from its poor performance of 15 per cent access to improved sanitation as
stated in the 2011 Multi Indicator Cluster Survey (MICS), he said three years
down the line, according to the 2014 Demographic Health Survey (DHS), the
situation remained the same.
Apprehension
“The challenge is that as other countries
progress, there is a real chance that Ghana may slip even further,” he warned.
Mr Duncan said: “The other challenge is that the country has not moved forward
in terms of actual access rates.”
In 25 years, Ghana was only able to advance in
sanitation access from seven per cent in 1990 at the start of the Millennium
Development Goals (MDGs) to 15 per cent in 2015 at the end, and showed a
percentage increase of eight.
“Our concern is that coming to the end of the
MDGs we seem to have stabilised and are not moving forward further, and this is
not based on some external assessment or some international experts coming in.
This is Ghana’s own data from the Ghana Statistical Service,” he stated.
He said in the 15 years of the Sustainable
Development Goals (SDGs) Ghana would have to move up 85 per cent in sanitation
coverage, cautioning that “if we don’t move it forward in five years, the
challenge will move from very very challenging to almost impossible.”
He indicated that what was of concern to him
was that countries in West Africa which had lower GDP than Ghana’s $1,800 as of
2013, such as Cote d’Ivoire, Sudan, Lesotho, Mauritania, Senegal, Sao Tome and
Principe and Cameroun, all had much higher sanitation coverage.
Mr Duncan said the experience in other
countries such as Ethiopia showed that it was possible to accelerate sanitation
coverage. “At the start of the MDGs in 1990, Ethiopia had three per cent
coverage but they moved to 28 in the period of 10 years,” he noted.
It’s not about money
Expressing his worry at the trend, Mr Duncan
said it had not arisen because of the lack of money, since much was being
invested by the development partners such as UNICEF, to aid Ghana to come out
of the woods in sanitation coverage. “It’s about how countries are choosing to
use it”, he said.
UNICEF, which is the development partner with
the greatest investment in sanitation, has invested about $6 million annually
towards sanitation and plans to invest $8 million next year.
However, this is counting for nothing due to
the lack of prioritisation of sanitation and the lack of willingness by the
Government of Ghana to invest in behaviour change programmes, according to
UNICEF.
“I am frustrated that the progress is not fast
enough. My frustration is that most of us in the sector recognise that very
simple things can make very large differences – simple things like the toilet
usage, simple things like washing the hands and about 4,500 Ghanaian children
die every year from simple diarrhoea.
“If Ghanaians are demanding more sanitation
and better sanitation I think this will receive a great response from
politicians,” he stated.
Small improvements
Mr Duncan, however, acknowledged that there
had been some small improvements, for instance, in open defaecation, where the
number of people practising it had reduced from 23 out of every 100 Ghanaians
to 21 out of 100 Ghanaians – an improvement of two per cent, which translates
to about 500,000 Ghanaians who have stopped open defaecation.
He nonetheless, stated that the change was not
significant because of the “broad acceptance of open defaecation as normal,”
citing especially the northern part of the country where he said open
defaecation had been accepted because many households lacked any form of
toilets.
He said the biggest change was in the rural
areas, where there had been an increase of 10 per cent in access to shared
improved toilets. There have also been some good initiatives in terms of broad
sanitation issues and awareness in terms of the National Sanitation Day, he
added.
Recommendations
Mr Duncan suggested an investment of at least
GH¢5 million each year in sanitation as a starting point at the local level, to
support behaviour change in the communities by providing fuel and other
logistics for field staff to complement an already existing Rural Sanitation
Management Strategy which relies on cheap and effective methods of behaviour
change.
“The emphasis is not on government finding
money for the capital. The strategy is about empowering individual households
and helping them understand why sanitation is important and helping them make
decisions about what they want to do about it,” he stressed.
He also asked for true commitment from the
government and “not the words that ‘I am committed to’, but actually falling
through delivery, providing the limited funds that are required to support it
and ensuring that there is accountability from the top to the bottom, holding
district assemblies which also have some responsibility accountable for
delivering on it.” Mr Duncan said it would be very difficult to make progress
if politicians and district assemblies were not held accountable.
Writer’s email: edmund.asante@graphic.com.gh
This
story was first published by the Daily
Graphic on November 23, 2015
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