Fifty-six communities receive open defaecation free status
Fifty six rural communities in 14 districts of the Volta Region have been awarded for achieving Open Defaecation Free (ODF) status ahead of the national vision of an ODF Ghana by 2020.
The Region started a Community-Led Total Sanitation (CLTS) initiative in 2012, which sought to change behaviour from open defaecation to using toilet facilities at home.
The districts are Ho Municipal, Kadjebi, Kpando, Akatsi South, Ketu North, Adaklu, Ho West, Hohoe, North Dayi, Ketu South, Akatsi North, South Dayi, Biakoye, and Keta.
Gabriel AduWusu, a UNICEF Representative at the celebration of ODF communities in Ho, said so far 19 districts in the Region were implementing the CLTS programme, with 14 of them being supported by UNICEF.
He said the CLTS frowned on subsidies for household latrines and focused on behavioural change and communities’ and “own decision to develop measures to stop open defecation”.
Mr AduWusu explained that the award was to honour the communities that had attained ODF status and encouraged them not look back.
Mr Francis Ganyaglo, the Deputy Volta Regional Minister, said the CLTS was one of the strategies being used to bring about improved sanitation in the Region through social awakening.
He said under the Government of Ghana-UNICEF WASH programme, GH¢232,094.00 was disbursed to 412 communities to end ODF in 2016.
He urged all ODF communities to dispose their faecal matter properly in order not to “perpetuate faeco-oral transmission.”
The event also saw the launch of the competitive “Inter-district ODF League Table”, which would show the districts with the greatest or least effort at ending ODF by 2017.
Source: GNA