Don’t convert kitchen, toilets into stores – Health Officer
The unapproved conversion of kitchen and toilets into bedrooms and stores is placing undue pressure on the limited public toilets facilities leading to the rise in defecation and cholera outbreaks in the metropolis.
Participants the cholera sensitisation and awareness programme on Thursday reached the above conclusion during a workshop sponsored by UNICEF and the Ministry of Local Government and Rural Development at the Veteran Association of Ghana Hall in Accra.
They also agreed that people sleeping in wooden kiosks and containers in many urban areas also accelerated the environmental pollution of the area with their human and solid wastes creating undue public nuisance and health hazards.
They called on the Accra Metropolitan Assembly (AMA) to help check the situation.
The participants, who were educated on environmental hygiene, included private toilet operators drawn from Ablekuma Central, South, North and Ayawaso East, Central and West – areas still battling with the re-occurrence of cholera cases.
Mr Jonas Amanu, Greater Accra Regional Environmental Health Officer, addressing the operators, said many people did not obey the by-laws on environmental health and this was the basis of cholera outbreaks in the metropolis.
He called on health officers to work harder and eschew vices such as laziness that could tarnish their image and urged them to raise environmental consciousness and hygiene practices among the people.
Mr Amanu advised the health officers to update their skills and knowledge to enable them to cope with the challenges in their profession.
He said the abolishment of old toilets in all sanitary sites in Accra was a national sanitation policy aimed at re-designing modern toilet facilities for the communities.
He said the previous facilities were either death-traps or had completely deteriorated because of lack of maintenance and expressed regret that some assemblymen and health officers have compromised their positions and allowed those old structures to continue to operate.
Mr Michael Dogbe, Deputy Regional Health Officer, who took the participants through basic rules of hygiene, warned them to desist from compounding the problem and expressed gratitude to the private toilet operators for taking part in the programme.
Source: GNA