Ninety households at Essikado, Sekondi and Takoradi without toilet facilities, kitchens and bathrooms are to face prosecution after breaching a corrective directive from the Sekondi-Takoradi Metropolitan Assembly.
The STMA Environmental Public Health Officer, Abdul Karim Hudu who was speaking to Citi News on the sidelines of the Sekondi-Takoradi Metropolitan Assembly’s general meeting said the 90 residential households are likely to pay around GH¢3,000 each for refusing to adhere to the several cautions.
“We sent several warning notices to these 90 residential households without toilets, kitchens and bathrooms. The number includes thirty households in Essikado Sub-metro, Sekondi and Takoradi sub-metros that did not comply with our recommended directives. So summonses were distributed to the houses. The house owners are going to appear before a Sekondi court from next week Tuesday to Thursday to answer why they did not comply with the notices given to them. The sanctions that the court is expected to impose on them ranges from 100 to 250 penalty units in accordance to the STMA’s by-laws. A hundred penalty unit sanction will attract GH¢1,200 payment which can go up to GHS3,0¢0,” he said.
Mr. Hudu said the move is to promote good health conditions to avert disease, therefore warned others lined up for similar prosecution to quickly ensure the provision of such facilities.
“When we finish prosecuting this 90 from Essikado, Sekondi and Takoradi, we will continue to give another notices because this is a health issue, and we don’t want people to openly defecate around. Landlords should be very careful because we want every house in the Sekondi-Takoradi metropolis to have a household toilet, kitchen and bathroom. We don’t want diseases such as typhoid fever, diarrhoea and others to affect the people. If you go to the Out-Patient Departments of hospitals around, these diseases are in the top-10 hence we want to minimize them with these measures. So this is a caution to every landlord in the metropolis that we will prosecute you if found without these in your house,“ he added.
The Sekondi-Takoradi Metropolitan Assembly has also in the last year prosecuted about 100 residents for open defecation, and the assembly is set to intensify enforcement of its by-laws against unhygienic conditions.
