Masonor, a middle aged man, busily fixes plywood in a 12-seater mini bus close to the Ajele Lamo public toilet at the Teshie Laskala area of the Ledzokuku-Krowor Municipal Assembly (LEKMA).
As he cuts the plywood and fixes it in the vehicle, one, two, three people can be counted passing by to use the toilet facility which costs 30p per a visit. The patrons of the facility, after making the payment, are handed an A4-size old newspaper and a small gallon of water to proceed to the place of convenience.
They stay there for a few minutes, come out, stand in the open for a few more minutes, and then walk away.
This was the spectacle that greeted this paper on its visit to the Ajele Lamo public toilet at Teshie Laskala.
“The members of this community use this facility a lot,” said James Narh, the caretaker of the public toilet. He said the facility was initially meant to be used free of charge but utilities and cost of maintenance had resulted in the little charges patrons paid whenever they visited the public place of convenience.
Masonor lives close to the public toilet and is exempted from paying before using the facility built over fifteen years ago to serve the community. However, instead of using the public place of convenience, Masonor prefers
to use the ‘Gbugblan’ beach located behind the Teshie Salem Primary and Presbyterian Senior High Schools as his place of convenience.
“I go to where there is ‘air condition’, and that is the beach. When I use the beach, I don’t need to pay anyone or think about the smell that would be on my body after I have used the place,” he said.
Masonor explained that he would not use the public toilet because “the main problem is the hygienic condition of the place. The ventilation is poor and when it gets full authorities delay in disposing of the waste.
“This place has ten toilets for the females and ten for the males but it has only two ventilators. This makes the heat stay in the toilet, resulting in the place smelling,” he added.
According to him, it would be extremely difficult for him to change his place of convenience from the beach to a toilet facility.
He believes it is his right as a son of the land to use the beach because that was what his forefathers used as their place of convenience. “Our forefathers used the beach as their toilet and nothing happened to them so no one can stop us from defecating on the beaches today or tomorrow,” he claimed.
Open Defecation (OD)
Defecating in the open instead of a toilet facility is one of the sanitation challenges facing the country. The act, which has been practiced over the years, has negatively impacted not just the communities where it is done but the country as a whole.
The United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) Chief Water, Sanitation and Hygiene (WASH) Officer, David Duncan, noted that 23 per cent of Ghanaians defecate in the open, according to statistics.
He said data from UNICEF also shows that over five million Ghanaians do not have access to any toilet facility and over 20 million do not have access to basic improved sanitation.
According to the UN agency, poor sanitation costs the country $290 million a year while open defecation costs Ghana $79 million a year.
Mr. Duncan observed that improved sanitation could reduce diarrhoea and its related deaths by 36 per cent as well as prevent 20 per cent diarrhoea-related stunting in children.
He said it was time government prioritized ending open defecation as it perpetuated the vicious cycle of diseases and entrenched poverty, citing the recent cholera outbreak that claimed over two hundred lives as evidence.
The UNICEF WASH chief officer further indicated that in order for the country to end open defecation,
Government must have a national plan that is supported by the presidency to facilitate a change in the social norm of open defecation to a point where using toilet facilities would be socially acceptable.
Behavioural Change Projects (RRI Team)
Government, together with other stakeholders, has rolled out several projects to end open defecation (OD) and help the country improve its sanitation.
One of such projects is the Greater Accra Metropolitan Areas (GAMA) sanitation project which began last year with tackling OD in ten municipal assemblies in the region. As part of the GAMA project, which included LEKMA, a ten-member Rapid Results Initiative (RRI) team was constituted for LEKMA with the goal of reducing open defecation and dumping of faecal matter on the Teshie and Nungua beaches within 100 days.
Mr. Richard Akakpo, Coordinator of the LEKMA RRI team, said open defecation was the first sanitation issue to be tackled by the World Bank-funded GAMA programme because of the ripple effect it has on other sanitation issues.
The team quickly hit the ground running with sensitisation programmes in the two localities. “We started sensitisation on radio, held staff and community durbars, and organised house-to-house education for two to three weeks.”
After sensitization, Mr Akakpo added, the RRI team formed and inaugurated a taskforce comprising all relevant stakeholders on OD for the municipality as one of the strategies to help stop open defecation.
“In addition, we also put up ‘stop open defecation’ sign posts at the beaches just to let our people know the practice is not helpful,” he stated.
The Reality
According to him, through the sensitisation, the team realized that the number of public toilets in the community were not enough to meet the sanitation needs of the growing population, and that the community members were also not aware of the by-laws on open defecation.
“When we were gathering data on household toilets, for every 10 houses we visited almost all the 10 houses did not have toilet facilities. It was difficult to even sermon 10 houses and get one household with a toilet. It was very difficult; you will not get,” he added.
This, coupled with the discovery that OD was not just a practice but part of the culture of the people, made the work of the RRI team very difficult at the beginning, the RRI coordinator recounted.
“Our people see open defecation as their human right and if they see that you are taking it away from them they will harm you. They see going to the beach as their normal human right,” he explained.
It therefore came as no surprise to the RRI team when the taskforce faced stiff opposition from the community members the first time they moved into the communities to arrest people for OD.
Mr. Akakpo said on the first day a number of people were arrested but government officials in the communities intervened and they were released on bail. He said after the incident the RRI team decided to halt the operations of the taskforce and go back and do more sensitization, after which things began to change.
Also, the RRI team urged the assembly to build more public toilets for the community members.
LEKMA’s Response
Based on the work of the RRI team, LEKMA set itself in motion to build more public toilets for the communities.
“We did a survey and realised that they have built 11 government toilet facilities for the people,” Mr. Akakpo indicated.
He explained that the assembly located most of the toilets in the coastal areas just in the bid to stop open defecation.
These new toilets were airier and cleaner than the first ones and were manned by officials of the assembly. Also, the charges were affordable for the community members.
He also noted that based on the re-sensitization there had been a behavioural change on the part of community members with regard to the use of the beach as their place of convenience.
“Some are willing to stop but others are not, so if we are talking about open defecation there should be an alternative. We at the RRI had to impress on the assembly,” he stated.
Achievements
Mr. Akakpo said the 100 days given to the team to work produced good results, even though at a point they realised that they could be attacked for their work on open defecation.
“Within the first 25 days there was resistance. When we reached the 50th day the team realised the message was getting to the people and we could achieve it by the 75th day. The project has come to stay with the people.
“I can say by the end of the project, we reduced OD by 50 per cent in Nungua and 30 per cent in Teshie,” he said.
Mr. Akakpo disclosed that the assembly was also willing to add another phase to the OD project in order to find out how much the construction of a toilet in each house at 50 per cent on credit would cost, an idea most of the community members are buying into.
The assembly also instituted a spot fine for those who will be caught openly defecating on the beaches. Some culprits who could not pay the amount were sent to the court and remanded while others were bailed and some were jailed.
The RRI team is on break now after completing its 100 days task of addressing OD in Ledzokuku-Krowor. Despite the success chalked so far, there is definitely more that needs to be done to effect a behavioural change in community members engaged in OD but like Mr. Akakpo put it, it behooves on the assembly to sustain the campaign and engage people like Masonor in finding solutions to the problem of OD in the municipality.
Jamila Akweley Okertchiri