Sanitation and Environmental Health Officers of the various Metropolitan, Municipal and District Assemblies (MMDAs), have been urged to discharge their mandate without fear or favour, to ensure improved waste management and cleanliness in the communities.

“Mananging our waste and improving sanitation is not the politicians job, those who have been given the mandate and are being paid to do that job must step up their effort by insisting that the right thing is done.”

Reverend Samuel Inkoom, who said this at an orientation workshop in Koforidua for MMDA’s participating in the maiden Sanitation Challenge for Ghana, indicated that, it was a shame that with its credentials in Africa, Ghana was ranked the seventh dirtiest country in the world and the second dirtiest in Africa.

He made it clear that Ghana after 57 years of nationhood and with its political standing in the scheme of affair in the world, could not afford to be named as a dirtiest country for any reason, and therefore urged all stakeholders to step up efforts.

The Sanitation Challenge is an innovation to improve liquid waste management and is opened to 139 pre-qualified MMDAs to promote competition and motivate the Assemblies to design and implement liquid waste management strategies to transform and improve the lives of the poor in Ghana’s urban areas.

It has a total prize value of 1.43 million pounds sterling, and will be delivered in multiple rounds over a three-and-half-year period, and it is being sponsored by the UK Department for International Development (DFID).

The orientation workshop was organized for Metropolitan, Municipal and District Chief Executives, Coordinating Directors, Planning Officers and Sanitation and Environmental Health officers, with a capital population of more than 15,000 from the Central, Volta, Greater Accra and Eastern Regions.

Mr Kweku Quansah, a representative of the Ministry of Local Government and Rural Development, emphasized the need for the MMDAs to prioritize sanitation management, especially liquid waste management, to improve sanitation in the country.

He noted that managing faecal waste from homes and institutions would improve the overall sanitation in the country, adding that, only one percent of Ghana’s liquid waste was treated.

He hoped that the qualified MMDs would fully participate in the completion to improve the situation.

Mrs Vida Duti, Country Director of IRC Ghana, Lead implementing agent of the Sanitation Challenge, said the awards were in three stages, with the first prize named ‘duapa’ award, for the participating Assembly that would present the strategy.

The second stage award would be for the actual implementation of the presented strategy and design, and the impact it would create with regard to liquid waste management, while the ultimate award would be at the end of the project in 2018.

She appealed to the media to support the objective of the project, by setting the tone for discussion on the need to prioritize sanitation in the various Assemblies to create the interest in the challenge not for the monetary value but for improvement in sanitation.