Mr John Latse, the Public Relations Officer (PRO), for the Sekondi-Takoradi Metropolitan Assembly (STMA), says the sanitary condition within the Metropolis has improved significantly through a sanitation campaign embarked upon by the Assembly.
He said most residents had shown great understanding of sanitation issues, thus helping address the ill-practices on environmental sanitation within the Metropolis.
Mr Laste was speaking at a meeting to update stakeholders on the state of the campaign, dubbed: “Operation clean your surroundings”.
The campaign, which was launched in November last year, is a component of a three-year European Union (EU)-funded Twin-Cities in Sustainable Partnership Project (TCSPP) being implemented by the a STMA, Palermo Municipality in Italy and other partners, to enforce the Assembly’s environmental sanitation by-laws and encourage citizens to take responsibility for their actions towards a clean environment.
It would also raise awareness on cleanliness, hygiene, waste management, and environmental preservation through media campaigns and the deployment of a task force to ensure residents complied with sanitation by-laws.
As part of the campaign’s implementation strategies, a task force undertakes unannounced visits to households, eateries, hospitality facilities, markets, and transport terminals, among other places, to inspect the state of sanitation and hygiene within those areas.
Mr Latse, also the Communication and Visibility Officer for TCSPP, said through the campaign, some facilities which were in insanitary and unhygienic states had improved to acceptable standards.
“Community members have taken up personal responsibility as watchdogs reporting and confronting sanitation offenders in their vicinities to authorities,” he added.
Again, open defecation which was one of the highest sanitation nuances in the Metropolis had reduced, saying “Some communities where we used to arrest people for open defecation have now made improvements when our task force visited those areas.”
He noted that some individuals and facilities that violated the Assembly’s sanitation by-law were either arrested and fined, or closed down.
Mr Laste said despite the gains made, a lot still needed to be done to realise the Assembly’s aim of becoming the cleanest Metropolis in Ghana.
He said, “The challenge we have now is that some people still resort to open defecation in some areas because they say most of the public toilet facilities are not in good shape in terms of management.”
The Visibility Officer, therefore, gave the assurance that the Assembly would undertake a special exercise to deal with operators of such facilities to keep their facilities clean and hygienic to ensure an end to open defecation.
Meanwhile, the STMA had started processes to prosecute some seven sanitation-related offenders for failing to comply with directives by the task force, Mr Laste said.
He said the task force would continue its unannounced inspections across the Metropolis with stiffer punishments for those who would violate the Assembly’s sanitation by-laws.
