The Greater Area Metropolitan Area – Sanitation and Water Project (GAMA-SWP) of the Accra Metropolitan Assembly (AMA) has sent three health teams to the Okaikoi South Sub-metro to sensitize the people on the “Toilet @ Half Price.”

The teams are being led by Environmental Health Officers of the AMA with the support of assembly members to carry out the education exercise in the communities of the sub-metro for the month of June.

During the exercise, households without toilet facilities would be served a 21-day notice to provide one, failure to do so would lead to them being summoned to court.

The GAMA-SWP is providing toilet facilities to households in selected 11 Metropolitan and Municipal Assemblies in Accra at half price as the recipients would pay half of the cost whilst the government bears the other half.

It is being sponsored by the World Bank through the Ministry of Local Government and Rural Development.

Mr Graham Sabah, the GAMA Project Coordinator of AMA, in an interview with the Ghana News Agency, said the sensitization exercise was to combine the enforcement of the AMA bye-laws with special emphasis on open defecation during National Sanitation Day exercises.

He said it has come to the notice of the AMA that most households do not have toilets in their homes and this has led to open defecation.

“What we are trying to do now under the GAMA is to promote households’ toilets at half price and anybody who buys into it would be given a rebate thus paying 50 per cent of the cost whilst the government takes the other 50 per cent,” he said.

Mr Sabah said many were claiming that they are not aware of the project; “so we are now moving into the communities knocking door-to-door, apart from the advertisement we put around, the radio and television discussions.”

He gave the assurance that the project is available and people should take advantage of it to get a household toilet to avoid being summoned to court, adding that; “So far we have tried the initiative in other communities and it is going on successfully and encouraging.”

The Director said after the awareness creation by GAMA the rest of the work would be handed over to the sub-metros to carry on and that they have targeted the provision of 19,000 household toilets in Accra by the completion of the project.

Mr Francis Ebo Mensah, Chairman, Environmental Sub-Committee of the Osu Klottey Sub-Metro, urged the awareness teams to take their work serious for the success of the project.

He called on them to avoid favouritism in their work and should always have patience in explaining the goals of the GAMA project.