About 38 modern institutional toilet facilities with changing rooms under the Sanitation and Water Project within the eight Metropolitan, Municipal and Districts in Kumasi have been commissioned.
The ceremonial commissioning of the project, funded by the World Bank (BRD-IDA/World Bank Group) took place at the Bantama Presbyterian Primary and Junior High School in Kumasi.
Madam Freda Akosua Prempeh, Minister of Sanitation and Water Resources, who commissioned the project, stated that, that it had always been a dent on the image of the country when access to decent toilets in schools was discussed.
According to her, as at 2016, less than 70% of basic schools in Ghana had access to toilets, compelling many children to resort to open defecation around the school, leave the compound to use a public toilet nearby, or go back home to use a toilet, and on some occasions end up elsewhere without returning to the school.
She noted that with the support from the World Bank, and through the GAMA Sanitation and Water Project, the government began a process to reverse the situation, resulting in the provision of 406 modern toilets to 260 different schools in the Greater Accra Region among several other wonderful sanitation and water-related interventions by 2020 through the GAMA project.
According to the Sanitation Minister, with the project adjudged the most impactful urban project of the decade, the World Bank willingly agreed to a government proposal to extend the project beyond the 2020 deadline to focus on the Greater Kumasi Metropolitan Area, comprising the KMA, Wades, Suame, Oforikrom, Asokore Mampong and Old Tafo Municipalities.
She indicated that, since 2021, what had now become known as the GAMA Sanitation and Water Project had continued to pursue an agenda for 129 modern toilet to about 90 selected schools and healthcare facilities in these areas to provide relief for about 200,000 school children, teachers, patients and other workers, adding that work was steadily progressing on all the toilets, 13 of which were in selected healthcare facilities.
The Minister stressed that it was one thing providing the beautiful facilities, and another thing to maintain them to serve their designed life spans, and disclosed that there were situations where the government and partners had provided decent toilet facilities, yet some few years or even months after, they were abandoned for the children to return to the bushes and other unorthodox places to defecate.
She entreated the heads of the beneficiary schools to use the new facilities as a point of contact to declare that a fight against the poor maintenance culture.
Mrs. Anna Chestari, the World Bank Representative, commended the Sanitation Ministry, GAMA and Kumasi Metropolitan Assembly (KMA) for putting in place pragmatic measures towards sanitation hygiene.
She was optimistic that the effort put in place by the Ministry, GMA and KMA towards achieving the SDG 6 through which human capital development was achievable.
Engineer George Asiedu, Co-ordinator for the KMA Water and Sanitation Project (WSP), gave an assurance of the commitment of his outfit to ensure that the World Bank vision of achieving SDG 6 was realised by ensuring sanitation hygiene to every Ghanaian, especially those within the GAMA and KMA, and to extend the project to other parts of the country.
