Editorial (The Daily Searchlight, Wednesday, June 8, 2022)
Open Defecation has been described as “a threat to the environment”, with a call for all to work together through accelerated action to eradicate it.
The Coalition against Open Defecation (M-CODe) made the call to coincide with the commemoration of the 2022 World Environment Day.
The M-CODe noted that the world cannot experience a healthy environment amid Open Defecation, which has now become a major problem in most developing countries.
Mr. Francis Ameyibor, M-CODe National Convener in an interview stated that the practice is common where sanitation infrastructures are not available, and the first step toward eradicating open defecation is to provide toilet facilities to the people.
He said World Bank Statistics suggested that regions with high rates of open defecation experience sanitation and improper waste management systems.
He said as M-CODe joins the global community to mark the 2022 World Environment Day which is on the general theme: “OnlyOneEarth,”a call for collective, transformative action on a global scale to celebrate, protect and restore our planet.
Ghana is reputed to have open defecation rates of anything between 17% to 22% of the population. This depends on the source of the statistic being employed.
Whatever the rate, however, the Daily Searchlight believes that the fact that we, as a nation, should have a statistic worth mentioning with this sordid business is deeply offensive to us morally. It should also be deeply offensive to the managers of our nation’s reputation.
We find it hard to understand why, with so many departments and agencies, it has become difficult for Ghana to halt such a damnable practice.
The fact of the matter is that Ghana currently has a Sanitation Ministry as well as a Ministry for Water Resources. At the same time, we have a Local Government and Rural Development Ministry and the Environmental Protection Agency.
We have the Ghana Police Service and we have the Judiciary. With the plethora Ministries, Departments and Agencies, it is unbelievable, that we cannot promulgate laws and enforce same to stop people from littering the environment with feces.
In the year 2022, poverty, no matter how low, cannot be used as an excuse not to have a latrine of some kind in any human habitation.
We note, for instance, that the NGO cited above suggests that government build public toilets. We say that in the absence of that, every household, whether private or commercial, should be able to afford at least one toilet, and this is a policy that should be ruthlessly enforced, by law and enforcement of law. When we do so, people would find the money to put up their sanitary facilities and stop despoiling the environment with feces in the name of poverty.
We find it utterly humiliating, that our name as a nation continue to be bandied about as one of those nations where this unhealthy and dehumanizing practice thrives, and we believe that national leadership should hold down their heads in shame.
(This article was first published in the column EDITORIAL of the Daily Searchlight of Tuesday,, 8th June, 2022. The Daily Searchlight appears on the newsstands of Ghana every working day and PDF versions are available for sale online twenty-four hours a day all day throughout the world on www.ghananewsstand.com).
