Minister-designate for Sanitation and Water Resources, Cecilia Dapaah has disclosed that the government is currently constructing 125,000 household toilets across the country to tackle open defecation.
“On the matter of open defecation, what we are doing is that we are building 125,000 household toilets across the length and breadth of this country,” Ms. Dapaah told Parliament’s Appointment Committee on Tuesday, February 23, 2021.
In 2015, Ghana was ranked second by WASH after Sudan in Africa for open defecation. Most households were identified without a proper toilet facility.
Failure on the part of landlords to construct washrooms in their houses, among other factors, has been linked to the practice of open defecation.
Cecilia Dapaah was hopeful that the government will subsequently construct about 1 million household toilets across the country to tackle the problem.
“I will be very happy if we can build about 1 million household toilets, and we have various types of toilets for various types of settlements and this is what we’ve carried out to do. The provision of household toilets is key because of the type of settlements we have. We also need more community toilets to make sure more people have access to these facilities,” she said.
Accra on course to become the cleanest city
The Minister also indicated that Ghana’s capital city, Accra is in the process of becoming the cleanest city in Africa.
“Accra is on course to become the cleanest city that President said in absolute terms. I think we are on the course looking at what we started doing and what I continued from my colleague,” the nominee said during her vetting on Tuesday.
In 2017, President Nana Akufo-Addo promised to make Accra the cleanest city by the end of his first term in office.
