According to the Nungua SHS headmistress, Cecelia Asabea Boateng, several attempts have been made to get the various authorities to address the school’s poor toilet conditions but to no avail.

Speaking to Citi News, Mrs. Asabea Boateng said over 1,500 students are bearing the brunt of this unpleasant condition.

She explained that the toilet that serves students in the area, was pulled down to be replaced with a new one, but that project is yet to materialize.

“There was a contract awarded to us, that is a World Bank project, which started in May, 2017, and it necessitated the pulling down of the old toilet. That is what we used when school is in session during the day.”

“When it [ the toilet] was pulled down, there was no alternative given. We petitioned the assembly but they did not respond to it,” she added.

The school’s girl’s dormitory has some toilet facilities that were opened to the 900 girls in the school population, but “there was so much pressure on it” she said.

The school is close to the beach, and Mrs. Asabea Boateng said in the rainy season, “water doesn’t stay, so we have a problem with the septic tank.”

“The very people who should support me and they were rather bringing me before the court to be judged. So she [the judge] will choose to close down the school,” Mrs. Asabea Boateng lamented.

–

By: Philip Nii Lartey/citifmonline.com/Ghana

The post NUNSEC to be closed down over inadequate toilet facilities appeared first on Citi 97.3 FM - Relevant Radio. Always.

Later on in 2013, the UN General Assembly declared November 19 as World Toilet Day. Since then the world has always celebrated this day to raise awareness on the need for toilets for all. The theme for this year is: “wastewater”.

What is the relationship between wastewater and toilet? According to Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) Six, “ensure availability and sustainable management of water and sanitation for all” makes wastewater and toilets a matter of health and human rights. Again, wastewater is classified in two classes: grey water and blackwater.  Greywater is waste water that is produced from non-toilet sources. These include showers, basins and taps. Whereas, blackwater is produced from its mixture with waste from toilets.

Globally, it is estimated that 80 per cent of the wastewater generated by society flows back into the ecosystem without being treated or reused. Further, only 39% of the global population (2.9 billion people) uses a safely-managed sanitation service, that is, excreta safely disposed of in situ or treated off-site.

In Ghana the narrative is not different. According to a 2016 report: “Assessment of Wastewater Treatment Plants in Ghana” authored by the Civil Engineering Department of the Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology, it was noted that Ghana has a very low coverage for wastewater and faecal sludge treatment which is mostly sewerage systems. The national average for sewerage is as low as 4.5 per cent. Where does the rest of the wastewater that is generated from the mixture of toilet go? Obviously, wastewater that is generated becomes a pollutant to surface and underground water sources since wastewater is left to flow freely into these sources.

The pollution of the water bodies as a result of the lack of treatment and reuse of wastewater leads to water borne diseases. It also poses danger to aquatic life.

The report further states that there’re two municipal and three metropolitan assemblies that have wastewater and faecal sludge treatment plants in Ghana – Ho and Ashaiman Municipal and Accra, Kumasi and Tamale Metropolitan Assemblies.

The above paints a gloomy picture of Ghana’s management of wastewater that is generated from toilets in over two hundred municipal and district assemblies. It then questions the possibility of achieving the third target of SDG Six: “by 2030, improve water quality by reducing pollution, eliminating dumping and minimising release of hazardous chemicals and materials, halving the proportion of untreated wastewater, and increasing recycling and safe use globally”. The consequences of the current situation are dire.

It shows again that that there is a problem with the management of human settlements across the length and breadth of the nation. According to the Local Government Act, 2016 (936) under the Functions of District Assemblies, subsection 3 (f)the law mandates: “without limiting subsections (1) and (2), a District Assembly shall  be responsible for the development, improvement and management of human settlements and the environment in the district”.

It is important to note that the achievement of the SDG Six and its accompanied targets must be tackled from the grassroot level. It also means that empowerment of the Metropolitan, Municipal and District Assemblies (MMDAs) is critical to the achievement of this goal.

Wastewater and toilets are crucial to our health. If Jack Sim was moved by the fact that the issue on toilets was neglected and shrouded in total embarrassment  what stops a nation whose President is co-chair to the Sustainable Development Goals, from achieving Goal six and its third target of improving water quality and subsequently the reuse of wastewater.

–

ByL Alex Blege

The writer is a freelance journalist. [email protected]/[email protected]

The post Wastewater and toilet [Article] appeared first on Citi 97.3 FM - Relevant Radio. Always.

Because the area does not have a public toilet, the residents have thus resorted to using uncompleted school blocks used by the students of the Serdom Basic School as toilet.

Joshua Mawutordzi the headmaster of the school in an interview with Citi News said some of their teachers have refused to teach because of the stench.

“Our classrooms are uncompleted so open defecation is going on nicely here on regular basis, anytime we come in the morning we will find human excreta dotted in the classrooms, it is an eye sore and disheartening to see students in their uniforms trying to clean and scrub the classrooms before they begin classes.”

He added that, “the class 3 teacher who is fed up over the issue has refused to use the classroom and now teaches the kids under the tree on the compound because of the stench emanating from the classroom.”

Mr Prosper Yekple, the Deputy Director of Supervision of the Ghana Education Service in the Asuogyaman District disclosed to Citi News that his unit will be forced to close down the school if the situation persist.

He said “any time teachers come to school they are greeted with toilet. How on earth can these innocent children be cleaning waste done by others?”

“This is really affecting teaching and learning activities, we are going to have a meeting with the community members on this issue and if it continues after the meeting then we do not have any option than to close down the school and take the teachers away because this thing has been going on for more than a year now so If we close down the school for a week the community will sit up.”

Mr Yekple who believes is a wrong form of protest said the assembly is responsible to provide them with public toilets.

“We are aware the classrooms are not the best but it is not prerogative of Ghana Education Service to provide them with Public Toilet but rather the district assembly so if they are defecating in the school to protest against government then this is a wrong protest,” he added.

–

By: Neil Nii Amatey Kanarku/citifmonline.com/Ghana

The post Residents turn classrooms into toilet in Asuogyaman district  appeared first on Citi 97.3 FM - Relevant Radio. Always.

The app is available for download on the Google Play Store to help people locate public toilets near their location.

The app was published by the Ministry of Urban Development and it uses Google Maps to mark out the nearby toilets in your vicinity.

According to a report by Times of India, the government has planned to launch the ‘Mission Toilet Locator; to Agra, Ajmer, Ahmedabad, Bhilai Nagar, Bhubaneswar, Dhanbad, Greater Mumbai, Guwahati, Jammu, Kochi, Vijayawada, and Greater Bengaluru.

The department of Urban development has suggested the municipal bodies tie up with Quality Council of India to map all the community and public toilets in a given area under control by any given municipal body. The government started this in New Delhi and regions around the national capital.

The report detailed that about 50-60 people use the app on a regular basis in NCR and the initiative has pushed the municipality to map about 5,162 toilets across the region. As a part of the announcement, the ministry has plans to start a reward scheme to push users to use the feedback option along with ratings on the toilets in order to increase the popularity of the app.

As soon as you launch the app, you are presented with the option to search toilet for ‘Female’ or ‘Male’ in addition to the options to search any toilet anywhere and one where you can submit a new entry using the ‘Submit Toilet’. When you take any of the buttons to search the public toilets, the app pushes you to a Google map where you can see all the pins corresponding to toilets. When you tap on the pin on the map, the app tells you if the location has been verified along with a reference photo. One thing to note here is that the photo is not always a proper image of the location. Instead, it looks like a random image pulled from the cloud to match the location.

Each screen of the public toilet shows the average score of the toilet based on parameters like ‘Hygiene’, ‘Infrastructure’, ‘Safety’, ‘Seat Type’, and ‘if the toilet is paid’ or free. You also get the fields that will inform if the toilet is ‘disabled friendly’, has ‘Sanitary Pad Disposal’. Other details include ‘Opening Hours’, Seats available including directions and a button to provide feedback about that particular toilet.

–

Source: The Times of India

The post App to locate toilets to be introduced in India appeared first on Citi 97.3 FM - Relevant Radio. Always.

For the research, the team collected samples from 27 mobile phone screens.

They found 515 different bacterial types and 28 different fungi, including the three new species.

Praveen Rahi, one of the scientists on the team, said that these bacteria and fungi thrive on human bodies. But he points out they are friendly to humans.

Studies carried out earlier have found that smartphone and tablet screens carry more germs than a toilet seat.

A 2013 report by British watchdog “Which?” collected samples from 90 devices and found “hazardous” levels of bacteria that can make people sick, including E. coli, NYDailyNews reported.

The report said that this could be because of the busy lifestyle that people lead today with many carrying their cellphones to the loo.

Phones also get hot and are mostly held in our hands or kept in bags and pockets. This too provides for suitable conditions for germ growth.

In another study in 2015, carried out by Dr. William DePaolo, assistant professor in the Molecular Microbiology and Immunology department of the University of Southern California, collected swabs from the phone screens of Buzzfeed employees to check for bacteria in comparison to a toilet seat.

They found that while the toilet had around 3 species of bacteria, the cellphones has on an average 10-12 species of bacteria.

The phone screens also had “worse types of bacteria” including E. coli and faecal bacteria.

There are about 25,000 germs on each square inch of your cellphone.

But is it as bad as it sounds? Can these bacteria on your cellphone be really harmful and make you sick?

A report in Bustle states that the alarming studies claiming that cellphones are 10 times dirtier than the average toilet seat can be sometimes misleading.

That is because the toilet seat may be an unfair comparison as it may after all may not be the dirtiest place in your house.

According to Dr Chuck Gerba, professor of microbiology at the University of Arizona, the toilet seat is one of the cleanest places in the house. Even cleaner than your chopping board.

“It’s one of the cleanest things you’ll run across in terms of micro-organisms. It’s our gold standard – there are not many things cleaner than a toilet seat when it comes to germs,” he told the BBC.

“Usually there are about 200 times more faecal bacteria on the average cutting board than on a toilet seat,” he says.

Also, like Praveen Rahi of NCSS pointed out, not all the germs may be harmful.

This is not to say that all germs are harmless because some of them could be.

So it is a good idea to keep your phone clean. Since you cannot dip it in water and soap, antibacterial wipes made specifically to clean electronics could come handy.

Another way to keep your phones clean, experts suggest, is by keeping your hands clean.

Not just phones, ATMs are quite dirty too

A research from last year found that the keypad of automated teller machines (ATM) may be loaded with bacteria from spoiled food to parasites that may also cause sexually transmitted disease (STDs).

Automated teller machine (ATM) keypads represent a specific and unexplored microhabitat for microbial communities.

“Our results suggest that ATM keypads integrate microbes from different sources, including the human microbiome, foods, and potentially novel environmental organisms adapted to air or surfaces,” said Jane Carlton, Professor at New York University, US.

“DNA obtained from ATM keypads may therefore provide a record of both human behaviour and environmental sources of microbes,” Carlton added.

The researchers in June and July 2014 took swabs of keypads from 66 ATM machines from Manhattan, Queens, and Brooklyn, in the US.

Specifically, the most common identified sources of microbes on the keypads were from household surfaces such as televisions, restrooms, kitchens and pillows, as well as from bony fish, mollusks and chicken.

Residual DNA from a meal may remain on a person’s hands and be transferred to the ATM keypad upon use, the researchers suggested.

ATM keypads located in laundromats and stores had the highest number of biomarkers with the most prominent being Lactobacillales (lactic acid bacteria), which is usually found in decomposing plants or milk products.

In other samples, the researchers observed the biomarker Xeromyces bisporus, which is associated with spoiled baked goods.

In addition, the team found a parasite typically seen in the gut of humans and other mammals, along with a species closely related to the human parasite Trichomonas vaginalis, which can potentially cause STD.

However, there is no significant difference was found in the keypads from ATMs located outdoors versus indoors, the researcher noted, in the paper published in the journal ‘mSphere.’

–

Source: Thenewsminute

The post Your phone has more germs than a toilet seat – Research appeared first on Citi 97.3 FM - Relevant Radio. Always.