World Toilet Day has been commemorated with a call on households and landlords to ensure the provision of adequate toilet facilities for their tenants.?The Accra Metropolitan Assembly (AMA) has also warned landlords who are extending their housing units to equally make available, enough toilet facilities to meet the demands of the newly admitted tenants.
It has been established that majority of landlords are extending their housing units with no or little toilet facilities to augment, placing too much pressure on public toilets.
This call was made during this year?s World Toilet Day celebration held at the Mamprobi Sempe 1 School in Accra.
According to the AMA Director in Charge of Public Health Dr. Simpson K. Boateng, who spoke on behalf of the Mayor Dr. Alfred Okoe Vanderpuije, the AMA will begin extensive exercise to identify households which have no toilet facilities and those with inadequate facilities to the number of tenants in them.
?What we also found out is that those houses which are doing extensions and have no provision for enough toilet facilities are putting pressure on the existing ones and the public toilets. We want to stress that public toilets are for pedestrians and those who are passing through the communities. They are not for tenants, tenants are to use the facilities provided them by their landlords,? he said, emphasizing that landlords have a responsibility of providing toilet facilities in their homes to prevent their tenants from using public ones.
Dr. Boateng averred that the AMA will live no stone unturned in its quest to ensure maximum safety of its citizens as far as public health is concern.
He also revealed that the Department of Public Health at the AMA has carried out a survey and identify the root cause of cholera in the metropolis as inadequate and proper disposal of faecal waste, and so clamped down on houses without toilets.
?In some communities, as much as 90% of the houses were without toilets?..We also found that there were 5,000 pan latrines in use in the city of Accra,? he said.
Dr. Boateng indicated that with the steps taken by the AMA, which involves the introduction of the polluter pay system, aggressive enforcement of the bye laws, the setting up of sanitation courts, training of prosecutors for the courts as well as prosecution of landlords who do not have toilet facilities after the expiration of notices served them, not a single cases of cholera has been recorded in the city.
He also ceased the opportunity to state that ?the measures we adopted have yielded the desired result. About 65% houses in the city have toilets in them. Many more are at various stages of completion. Pan latrines have been phased out completely.?
In an exclusive interview with Hon. Dr. Philip Lampte-Lamptey, Ablekuma Sub-Metro Chairman, he expressed the hope that with the introduction of the ASIP Project, lots of constructions in areas of toilet facilities are ongoing.
He noted that the ASIP Toilet has provided 37 public toilets in the city with 8 soon to be commissioned, adding that, ?most of these toilets are situated in our schools. As a matter of fact 20 of such sets of toilets are to be started in the schools.?
Philip Lampte-Lamptey also pointed out that the AMA has engaged the services of members of its task force to take patrol on the beaches and areas which are prone to open and free-range defecation.
?Anybody found in that cat will be prosecuted by the AMA. Our men are on the ground, and we are working very hard to ensure the culture of open defecation is ruled out completely from the system,? he said.
