General News of Saturday, 9 September 2017
Source: citifmonline.com
2017-09-09
Ajoa Yeboah-Afari
The Chairperson of the Editor’s Forum, Ajoa Yeboah-Afari, is of the view that government should focus on providing potable water in homes rather than in communities.
According to her, although communal pipes and boreholes have been helpful, it was time government provided water to households.
“Of course when the government, or a benevolent organisation or one of Ghana’s development partners, provides a deprived community with water by way of constructing a communal standpipe, or a well, it causes for celebration; a great achievement. But I suggest that the focus now should be shifting to the provision of household taps; tap water.
It’s time the government and other providers went the extra mile and extended pipelines to homes, especially in deprived communities….. People should have taps in their homes!” she said.
Ajoa Yeboah-Afari also listed the harmful impact of trekking miles for water has on children and women.
“Sometimes, women and children have to walk for miles, looking for water. Some children even miss school, or are so tired by the time they turn up in class, that they can only doze and can’t pay attention to the lessons,” she lamented.
Ajoa Yeboah-Afari said this on Thursday at the launch of ‘Funding Opportunity for Ghanaian Journalists on SDGs Reporting’; an initiative of the Media Foundation for West Africa (MFWA).
The initiative forms part of efforts to mainstream the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) in development reporting in Ghana for social change and is funded by the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) Ghana.
Executive Director of MFWA, Sulemana Braimah, in his remarks, charged journalists to help the nation to achieve the 17 SDGs.
“Whatever we are talking about, it can be related to a particular goal, target or indicator in the SDGs. And I think as media, our role and responsibility is to help by way of highlighting the issues, tracking what government is doing, highlighting what is happening in our various communities, the contributions of citizens and empowering our people with knowledge so that they can demand what is rightfully theirs; whether at the local assembly, at the regional level, or at the national level,” he urged.
