The Minister of Local Government and Rural Development, Julius Debrah is appealing to Ghanaians to help make the National Sanitation Day a success and end Ghana’s sanitation crisis.
According to him, a recent survey by the United Nations revealed that Ghana was among the list of ten countries in the world performing poorly in the area of sanitation.
He said such reports don’t help the good image of Ghana in the world, especially when the country has been portrayed as a beacon on the African continent.
[contextly_sidebar id=”td54xGjM3t24Ftlt44ssS9gjHWkbV7ut”]The Ministry of Local Government and Rural Development has set the first Saturday of every month aside, to clean the environment beginning Saturday, November 1, 2014.
Speaking to Citi News, the Minister, underscored the need to clean Ghana, saying, “looking at the cholera outbreak which plagued the country, we will all agree that one of the causes is as a result of insanitary conditions,” in the country.
“We thought it wise…that we need to do something to reverse this trend,” he indicated, adding that “We needed to properly pay much attention to appealing to the minds and hearts and conscience of the citizenry and that is one addition that we want to bring on board.”
He said, “we got it wrong but we don’t necessarily want to engage ourselves in the blame game trying to find who did what and who didn’t do what. I must admit that officialdom; we also take part of the blame because there are instances of delay in releasing funds meant for these things.”
Mr Debrah said the Metropolitan Municipal and District Assemblies (MMDAs) as well as the entire citizenry also have a role to play to correct the sanitation issues that has plagued the nation.
The recent cholera outbreak has claimed over 150 lives and affected about 20,000 people in the country.
“We are thinking that if we are able to appeal to the conscience of people and explaining to them the implications of failing to keep our environment clean could be very costly to us, just us we witnessed recently,” he added.
Meanwhile, President John Dramani Mahama has encouraged Ghanaians to come out and work together to clean the country on Saturday, during the National Sanitation Day.
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By: Godwin Allotey Akweiteh/citifmonline.com/Ghana