The Kumasi Metropolitan Assembly (KMA) says that it has constructed 1,010 household toilets in 2023 under the Greater Kumasi Metropolitan Area (GKMA) Sanitation and Water Project.
This represents a 67.5 percent increase compared with the 2022 performance of 603 household toilet facilities.
Since the start of the project in 2021, some 2,024 household toilets have been constructed in the KMA benefiting over 8,096 individuals.
Mr. Samuel Pyne, KMA Chief Executive, who announced this, said with respect to the institutional toilets, contracts were awarded for the construction of 16 facilities in nine selected school sites and handed over to the respective contractors.
Out of the total number, five of the Institutional toilets have been completed and handed over for use.
He was speaking at the first ordinary meeting of the first session of the ninth KMA in Kumasi.
The GKMA Sanitation and Water Project, which is expected to end in December 2024, seeks to increase access to improved sanitation and water supply in Greater Kumai with emphasis on low-income communities.
It will also strengthen management of environmental sanitation in the Greater Kumasi Metropolitan Area.
The project is funded by the World Bank through the Ministry of Sanitation and Water Resources.
The Daily Searchlight is of the belief that if the object is really about sanitation and not the excuse to access funding, then the KMA and the Ministry should be pursuing other measures, such as the prosecution of households without toilets.
Kumasi has tens of thousands of households and thousands of institutions, and if it is the case that government has taken upon itself the task of providing toilets for homes, it would take ages, if ever, before toilets are provided for all.
The fact of the matter is that each human being has to visit a toilet at least once a day, if not more. It stand to reason that houses are constructed with these facilities. In the year 2024, we do not think that the solution to such a basic issue is the provision of central government toilets, particularly toilets funded by outsiders and donor funding, when we can insist, by law, that every household have such a facility or face prosecution.
The time has come for us to insist that Ghanaians accept a certain level of responsibility for themselves and their needs, instead of constantly lumping them with debt with the excuse that they are poor, when, at the end of the day, the debts we incur on their behalf would be borne by them.
