On 5 August 2026, badly pressed while shopping at China Mall near the Accra Mall and Action Chapel roundabout, I went in search of the toilet. It turned out to be a detached cubicle outside the mall building. There was no running water anywhere in it. The bowl, without a seat, held the unflushed excreta of the person before me, who had no water to flush with.
The basins had no soap, no towels and no water. A visitor could use the toilet but could neither flush it nor wash their hands. This article explains why that failure matters, who is responsible, and why the answer is not to patch the cubicle but to close it down and build what the mall should have had from the start: proper toilets inside the building, on each floor. A toilet without water is not a convenience. It is a disease distribution point.
- What I Found
I did not go looking for a story. I was a pressed shopper, like anyone else, at about six in the evening. To reach the toilet at all, I had to leave the mall building and cross open ground to a cubicle standing on its own near the road entrance. I recorded what I found.
The bowl had no seat cover. It could not be flushed, because no water ran anywhere in the facility, and so the previous user’s faeces sat exposed in the pan, waiting for me and for whoever came after. The floor tiles were soiled. The walls carried old stains and broken plaster, with clear water damage around the basin. A bin stood open beside the sink, full of waste.
The basins were ornaments. No water from the taps. No soap. Nothing to dry hands with. Every person who used that toilet walked back into the mall, touched railings, door handles, money and other people, with unwashed hands.
And consider this. The cubicle stands outside the building. When the rains come down hard, as they do in Accra, a pressed shopper inside China Mall has no toilet at all, unless they are prepared to run through a downpour to reach one that cannot flush.
- Why Handwashing Is the Whole Point
Cholera, typhoid, dysentery and hepatitis A all travel the same road: from faeces to hands to mouths. Handwashing with soap under running water breaks that road. Health authorities worldwide rank it among the cheapest and most effective public health measures known.
Ghana learnt this lesson the hard way. During Covid-19, Veronica buckets and soap appeared at every shop door in the country. We proved we could do it when we were afraid. Six years on, at a modern commercial facility in the capital, we cannot keep water and soap at a toilet basin.
And when water fails, it fails twice. The same dry pipes that stop handwashing stop flushing. Human waste then sits exposed in an open bowl, and every new user must add to it. Flies do not need an invitation. A dirty toilet offends the eye. A waterless toilet endangers the community. The users of that facility did not stay in the cubicle. They dispersed into the mall, into trotros, into homes and chop bars across Accra.
- This Is Not a Cleaner’s Failure
It is tempting to blame the cleaner. That would be wrong. Soap runs out in a day. Water can fail in a morning. But stained walls, broken plaster and a bowl in that state take weeks and months of neglect. What I saw was not a missed shift. It was the absence of any working system: no cleaning schedule, no supervision, no procurement of consumables, no manager checking.
The law does not treat this as a private matter. The Public Health Act, 2012 (Act 851) obliges owners and occupiers to keep their premises free of insanitary conditions. The Local Governance Act, 2016 (Act 936) gives our Assemblies the mandate, through their Environmental Health Officers, to inspect and to enforce. A commercial facility that profits from public patronage owes the public a safe washroom in return.
- What Must Happen
For China Mall, patching the cubicle is not the answer. Close it down. A multi-storey commercial building serving thousands of customers should not be sending them outside to a lone toilet by the road in the first place. Our building rules expect public buildings to carry proper sanitary facilities inside, on each floor, matched to the number of people they serve: flushing toilets with seats, running water, soap, towels, and provision for the disabled.
That is what the mall must now build, with the Assembly’s permits and the Environmental Health Officers’ approval. Until then, the closed cubicle should be cleaned out, secured, and signposted to whatever decent interim provision management arranges.
For our Assemblies, the case is a test of enforcement. Environmental Health Officers should not wait for outbreaks. High-patronage commercial premises deserve routine, unannounced sanitary inspection, with notices served and prosecutions pursued where owners refuse to act. The powers exist. They must be used.
For the rest of us, there is a citizen’s duty too. Report bad facilities. Photograph them. Write to the operators and copy the Assembly. I have submitted a formal complaint and a full inspection report on this facility to its management, and I will follow it up. Silence is how these conditions persist.
- Conclusion
We measure a facility’s respect for the public not by its shop fronts but by its washrooms. A mall that cannot provide water to flush a toilet or wash a hand, and that has no toilet inside the building at all, is telling its customers what it thinks of them. Ghana has the laws, the building rules, the officers and, as Covid-19 showed, the ability. What is missing is the habit of insisting. Close that cubicle at China Mall, and let the toilets that replace it, on every floor, be where the insisting starts.
Written by Nana Annor Amihere II
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