Sanitation at all Times!

The two-story building consists of nine flats. They have a twenty-one day cleaning cycle where a flat sweeps the house twice in three weeks. Every Saturday, the three flats on every floor do group cleaning; they sweep and scrub the main drain in the house. Whist two floors do their utmost to honour the cleaning arrangement, one floor continues to flout the plan, one flat insisting that they do nothing on the ground ,floor. Apparently, pounding Fufu downstairs and having their waste water pass down the main drain count not. One flat just refuses to clean, and they have young children.

With attitude like  that one cannot be surprised that Ghana has been engulfed by filth and has over the years been overwhelmed by the cholera disease. It is sad yet comical that in the twenty-first Century, a nation has to declare a sanitation day in an effort to get residents to clean their surroundings. The waste situation in Ghana is a stark proof that the nation moves backwards rather than forward. Over the last four centuries, we have successfully shirked our cleaning responsibilities, domestically and publicly. 

Ghanaians have developed deplorable attitude to cleanliness; many simply refuse to practice clean lifestyles. Both literates and illiterates are guilty of creating and living in dirty surroundings. Even the basic acts of sweeping, dusting and scrubbing their own homes have become chores so much that many simply neglect such healthy activities. An equally abysmal situation pertains in public spaces. Metropolitan and District Assemblies are overwhelmed by waste—domestic as well as industrial; despite some attempts at managing waste, cities and towns are engulfed by filth. Throughout the country, gutters have become dumping sites for feces and solid waste; they have thus degenerated from drains to health hazards in various communities. But the problem goes far beyond abused drains.  

Some home owners fail to provide places of convenience and proper drainage systems, creating opportunity for free range defecation, indiscriminate disposal of liquid waste which pollute the air and create stagnant waters: such situations compromise people’s health. The offending owners design every available space within their buildings as living rooms, to the exclusion of washrooms and other living conveniences, forcing tenants to use public places or surrounding lands as places of convenience. About “six million Ghanaians practice open defecation because they have no access to toilet facilities”. The offenders, representing “twenty percent” of the Ghanaian population, apparently do not know the “health implications” of their actions. Such home owners neither bother to create proper outlets for liquid waste. Water usually collects at the back of the house or runs under neighbours’ walls, defacing property, polluting the environment and again, compromising residents’ health. The danger is that an appreciable number of Ghanaians continue to replicate such unhealthy building patterns.

Many Ghanaians have become so insensitive to filth that they wallow in it and gladly add to it. People--young and old, lettered and unlettered, male and females—litter streets rather than leave rubbish in garbage bins. Granted, metropolitan and district assemblies fail to provide adequate bins for public places in the country. However, sometimes where they are present, irresponsible citizens would litter the roads rather than walk to garbage bins. Where there are no bins, rather than behave conscientiously, keep the waste till they get home or to a bin, they leave it by the wayside. Our cleaning efforts are similarly problematic.

Metropolitan and District Assemblies are responsible for the general cleanliness of public spaces in the country. Among other functions, they employ people to clean public spaces; they also secure equipment for transportation of garbage from homes and public places to designated dumping sites. That mandate includes proper maintenance of dumping sites to ensure environmental sustainability. Also included in the Assemblies’ duties is enforcing sanitary rules in domestic domains and public spaces.

In the past, Sanitary Inspectors would go round people’s homes to inspect that basic tasks such as sweeping of homes and cleaning of bathrooms, tap areas and animal shelters were properly done to avoid unhygienic conditions that could lead to diseases and death. Similar monitoring was done in commercial areas. Those known duties of the Assemblies have not changed with time. In fact, rapid population growth, rural urban migration, technological advancement and other global trends all have added implications for waste generation, thus adding to the challenges of the mandate of Assemblies as cleaning agents, calling for innovations in waste management. Sadly, the assemblies have not been able to handle waste challenges, hence, the cholera pandemic and the resultant human losses.

Amidst such waste chaos, the Government has initiated a sanitation system where the first day of every month will be dedicated to general cleaning, effective November 1, 2014. The initiative raises apprehension rather than hope for any solution to the waste crisis in the country. The general deplorable attitude of Ghanaians towards safe waste management persists so what good could possibly come out of this initiative? When people fail to honour simple sweeping and scrubbing arrangements in their homes how would they clean the streets? When about twenty percent of Ghanaians have no access to toilet in their homes how will Saturday’s cleaning stop them from defecating indiscriminately? With those gaping gutters scattered across the country, how will people be stopped from throwing rubbish into those drains after Saturday?

For Saturday’s cleaning to be very effective there has to be water. Can the Ghana Water Company assure Ghanaians that water will flow across the country so that all residents will have whatever amounts of water they will need for thorough cleaning? Will the assemblies mobilize its own resources well such that filth can be carried away from neighbourhood dumps or will the usual offensive sight prevail where waste swept will be left at the curb of gutters for the rain or wind to send them right back to the gutters or to homes? This whole sanitation day issue is a joke. The joke of the year!

The most important question. Even if the assemblies overdo themselves and cart the filth away, where will they send them? To the landfills to deface communities and make people sick through the stench? Dump the waste and breed flies who will go to the communities and increase cholera infection? Dump the filth at the landfills and pollute the environment with methane, the third major cause of global warming and go and pray to God for deliverance from the extreme heat?

May the good Lord deliver us from people in  governance who demonstrate laziness and disgusting incompetence through adhoc solutions that multiply problems! Sanitation day, here we come!