Mr. Edwin Nii Lantey Vanderpuye, Deputy Minister of Local Government and Rural Development, has hinted that Parliament would soon pass the National Sanitation Bill into Law.

He said the Bill when passed into Law, would make it compulsory to punish offenders who refused to participate in the National Sanitation Day (NSD) exercise and dumped garbage indiscriminately.

Mr. Vanderpuye was briefing heads of government departments, agencies and institutions, on activities lined up for the NSD exercise on Saturday, July 4, when the Upper West Region takes its turn.

He urged heads of departments, agencies, and institutions, to deal decisively with recalcitrant and lazy workers who would like to give excuses, to stay away from the exercise.

The deputy minister solicited support from traditional rulers, workers, social groups, faith-based organisations, institutions, political parties, civil society and non-governmental organisation, to make the exercise a success.

He said the NSD exercise was the brainchild of the Ministry of Local Government and Rural Development, and appealed to people in the region not to politicise it, because an outbreak of cholera would not discriminate against anybody.

“All should therefore consider the exercise very important to ourselves and Ghana, and let us make it part of Ghana’s life,” he pointed out.

Mr. Vanderpuye called for the proper training of children to be more responsible for their own personal hygiene.

The deputy minister said it was worrying to see students in some of the universities practising open defecation because they could not take care of toilet facilities provided them.

“The time has come for us to change the perceptions, behaviours, actions and inactions of the youth, and rekindle in them the love for cleanliness in order for them to take charge of the environment,” he said.