Residents of Kpotame, a suburb of Tema Manhean, have resorted to open defaecation and use of private toilet facilities, following the abandonment of the construction of a public toilet for the area, by the Tema Metropolitan Assembly (TMA).
Health watchers have raised issues with residents engaging in open defecation at the shores, while others also practice ‘tie and throw’ and ‘take away,’ a practice in which they defecate into polythene bags and either throw it out or drop it within the community.
The concerns come at the back of the Tema Metropolitan Health Directorate recording and treating its first case of cholera at Kpotame in January this year and the potential of a spread due to insanitary activities such as open defecation.
Residents of Kpotame, in 2021, through the Ghana News Agency (GNA), appealed to the TMA to complete the abandoned public toilet facility for the community as they lacked an acceptable place of convenience.
They said the construction of the 10-seater water closet facility with a bio-digester started at about 2017, as part of the Greater Accra Metropolitan Area (GAMA) sanitation project.
Three years down the line, it remained abandoned at the same level it was in 2021, with the structure roofed and plumbing pipe works done awaiting fittings; wall tiles in the 10 cubicles had also been fixed.
The GNA gathered information that while residents kept their fingers crossed for the completion of the project, they had to pay one Ghana cedi per visit, to use the privately owned toilet facilities in the community, pushing most people to resort to open defaecation at the shores.
Mr Joshua Agudah, the Assemblyman for the Dade Agbo electoral area, stated that over the years, he had raised the abandoned toilet issue at Assembly meetings, revealing that an offer from him to complete the project was not accepted.
Mr Agudah disclosed that “the previous government didn’t allow me to work on it, the reason being that it was founded by the one million per constituency policy, so if anything, I should seek approval from the central government.”
He expressed hope that the new administration would give approval for the completion of the toilet facility, to help curb the spread of communicable diseases such as cholera in the area.
Meanwhile, Mr Edwin Afotey Ablade Odai, the Tema Metropolitan Disease Control Officer, during a stakeholder meeting on cholera, said eradicating the disease could be achieved if environmental factors such as open defaecation was addressed.
Mr Odai stated that open defecation contributed greatly to the spread of cholera, as flies would sit on the faeces and transfer the bacteria onto food, contaminating it.
-GNA
