Despite policies that require every household to have a toilet facility, the 2016 District League Table (DLT) has revealed that not a single community in the entire 16 metropolitan, municipal and districts in the Greater Accra Region, has been certified as open-defecation free (ODF).
The Research Officer at the Center for Democratic Governance (CDD) Ghana, Mohammed Awal, who revealed this, added that all the communities in the region scored zero in the assessment of household access to toilet facilities.
Awal blamed the non-existence of an ODF community to poor urban planning.
“We have not done proper urbanisation in Ghana and, therefore, still have urban slums. In every plush area that you find in Accra, there is a squatter settlement and that is the problem we are facing.
“We need to be careful about how we plan our urban cities and how we deal with our squatter settlers because there is the need to provide them with access to basic services,” he stressed.
According to him, 51 percent of Ghana’s population is urbanised and district assemblies in these areas should be well resourced to be able to plan well in providing basic infrastructure services for citizens who have come to settle in the urban areas.
He announced that the findings of the DLT will be forwarded to government to enable it to do better targeting as in terms regions to be prioritised.
Some indicators with which the districts are measured include BECE pass rate, rural water coverage, and community open defecation certification.
It also measures the MMDAs on skilled delivery services in the health sector, police to population coverage and FOAT performance.
The objective of the DLT is to increase social accountability in Ghana so as to lead to improved development for the country’s population.
It does this by opening up space for dialogue between the state and the population through the provision of tracking of essential information on wellbeing of residents at the district level.
La Nkwantanang-Madina Municipal, Tema Metropolitan, and Awutu Senya East Municipal topped the 2016 League Table, while North Tongu, Ekumfi, and East Gonja Districts came last.
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