Fatima
Anafu-Astanga
Bolgatanga, Nov.11,
GNA – Mr Kweku Quansah, the Deputy Director, Ministry of Sanitation and Water
Resources (MSRW) said Ghana needed a central taxing system to support issues of
Water, Sanitation and Hygiene (WASH).
He said a
sustainable financing system was critical for the country to achieve the
Sustainable Development Goals on sanitation and indicated that sanitation
problems far outweighed what government sought to fund in sanitation
interventions.
“There is still a huge
gap between finances mobilized as a country from government sources to
implement Water, Sanitation, and Hygiene interventions and that of development
partners and exactly how much is required to help provide facilities for every
community in Ghana,” he said.
Mr Quansah made the
suggestion in an interview with the Ghana News Agency at a stakeholders’
meeting on Water, Sanitation and Hygiene interventions in disaster prone
communities (WASH DPC) in Bolgatanga in the upper East Region.
He said more
discussions were ongoing on how to improve finance mobilization internally, as
a way of ensuring a sustainable funding base for WASH activities as it benefits
were immense and needed to reach out to other communities.
He therefore
appealed to development partners to find best ways to support and invest more
in WASH so as to reach out to more communities.
“One of the bedrocks
of the WASH DPC project is coordination and collaboration with National
organizations in Ghana that intervene in similar WASH activities and at the
regional levels where there are technical and interagency committee platforms
working on the grounds together to ensure successful implementation of
activities,” Mr Quansah said.
The joint UN WASH
DPC project was implemented from 2014 to 2017 to improve health and livelihoods
in 24 selected districts in the then three regions of the north with services
targeted at 200,000 people including 50,000 school children in the communities.
It was funded by
Global affairs Canada.
The project reached
out to 271 communities out of 265 target communities, using the community led
total sanitation (CLTs) approach.
Under the resilient
water supply component of the project, all 265 communities that were targeted
have achieved 100 per cent access to safe and sustainable water sources through
interventions such as the development of 169 new water points, and the
rehabilitation of 396 existing facilities compliant to flood prone designs.
GNA
