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| 1 out of 4 Ghanaians defecates in gutters and other open places |
Development
Partners (DPs) in the Water, Sanitation and Hygiene (WASH) sector are confident
there is a good chance for improving Ghana’s sanitation situation through the
Community-Led Total Sanitation (CLTS) model.
A workable
option is to give serious consideration to extending CLTS to cover small towns,
according to DP Lead for the WASH Sector, the Department of
Foreign Affairs, Trade and Development (DFATD or Development Canada).
The CLTS model employs the community mobilisation strategy, empowering
communities to analyse their sanitation conditions and take collective action
to change their situation. Primarily, it focuses on collective change of
attitudes and behaviour from all community members towards completely stopping
Open Defecation (OD). It has largely been deployed as a rural community –
rather than urban or small town – sanitation strategy in many countries.
But Dr. Cheryl Gopaul-Saikali, Counsellor for Development at Development
Canada (which replaced the Canadian International Development Agency (CIDA) in
June 2013), has said that “there are practical reasons for adopting CLTS in
small towns and urban communities as is being done in Kenya, Zambia, India and
at home in Ghana.”
Dr Gopaul-Saikali made the suggestion when representing WASH sector DPs
at the 40th edition of the National Level Learning Alliance Platform
(NLLAP), which was held in Accra last Thursday. It was on the topic Implementing CLTS in Small Towns: Looking
back to inform our way forward.
The meeting was dedicated to sharing the outcomes of the Northern
Region Small Towns Water and Sanitation Project (NORST) project, a pilot project
carried out in the Northern Region of Ghana to test the viability of CLTS in
small towns.
Two communities, Bincheratanga (Nanumba North District) and
Karaga (Karaga District), were selected for the NORST pilot. Implementation was
under the auspices of the Environmental
Health and Sanitation Directorate (EHSD) in collaboration with UNICEF and Community
Water and Sanitation Agency (CWSA).
Commenting on the
pilot, Dr Gopaul-Saikali said “Given the current status quo, it is obvious that
expected improvements in sanitation would be difficult to attain. Sector DPs
are therefore pleased that some agencies (including UNICEF, Plan Ghana, TREND
and Canada) are piloting CLTS in small towns and selected peri-urban
communities in collaboration with the government and local partner organizations.”
But making further progress requires, first, “bringing information from the
field to the national level for inclusive discussions…” Dr Gopaul-Saikali pointed out. She also
recommended the documentation and sharing of lessons, stressing this “will
prevent repeating mistakes made and accelerate learning at scale.”
A third suggestion from Dr
Gopaul-Saikali was that government should demonstrate “willingness to
work in partnership with all stakeholders…”
In an interview, Naa Lenason Demedeme, Acting Director of EHSD of the
Ministry of Local Government and Rural Development (MLGRD), welcomed the
suggestions from the DPs, noting that collaboration is particularly important.
He told me that having a more effective collaboration is
critical, particularly because there are also projects which are in the pipeline
and these have been possible as a result of collaboration.
Meanwhile, Ghana is attempting to replicate the examples of
countries like India where CLTS is said to have been used to dramatically
improve sanitation.
The 2013 Multiple Indicator Cluster Survey (MICS, 2013)
Report estimates Ghana’s improved sanitation (safe toilet) access rate at 15%
as at 2012, against the 2015 Millennium
Development Goal (MDG) target of 54%. At the same time the open defecation rate
of the country is 23%, implying that 1 in 4 Ghanaians defecate in the open
every day.
Further statistical disaggregation shows that improved
sanitation coverage for urban Ghana is 21% while coverage for rural Ghana sits
at 9%.
In
August 2013, the Coalition of NGOs in Water and Sanitation (CONIWAS) analysed
that with the coverage rate of 1 percentage point per annum, it is likely to
take 40 years for Ghana to reach the MDG target of 54% for sanitation and
another 46 years to reach universal coverage.
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