It would be piloted by the Ministry of Sanitation and Water Resource (MSWR) through Public Private Partnership. Mr Joseph Amoah, a Director at the MSWR, who launched the concept, said government was committed to ensuring clean environment to eliminate unhealthy practices, hence the adoption of the initiative to avoid indiscriminate defecation.

He expressed regret that the country had been characterised by poor environmental sanitation due to unhygienic attitude of the people and had resulted in diseases. Mr Amoah said: “The situation if allowed to go unchecked can have serious adverse effects on the sustainability of President Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo’s objective of making Accra the cleanest city in Africa.”

The Director said the filth that had engulfed towns and cities could be easily prevented if Ghanaians could take serious observation of environmental cleanliness. He said so much resources had been committed into the provision of a number of sanitation facilities as well as education at all levels, yet nothing had been achieved.

Mr Amoah said the MSWR was considering the re-introduction of the “Sama Sama” concept and make adequate resources available to the Environmental Health Officers to carry out their mandate of checking insanitary conditions in the communities.

“This, we believe, will be one of the most effective means by which we can deliver a clean, safe and healthy environment for the benefit of the people,” he said. He expressed gratitude to Duraplast Ghana Limited and the Global Communities for the Digni-loo idea to compliment the efforts of government to achieve the Sustainable Development Goal ‘6’.

Mr Alberto Wilde, the Country Director of Global Communities said the Digni-loo initiative was part of the USAID Water, Access, Sanitation and Hygiene (WASH) project.  He said it was to support and improve hygiene in communities to avoid open defecation. Mr Wilde said Digni-loo is a plastic slab and described it as affordable, durable and easy to install and re-usable.

Mr Robert P. Jackson, the United States Ambassador to Ghana, who graced the occasion said Ghana was a priority country for USAID’s sanitation project and that the WASH programme had improved sanitation for more than 50,000 Ghanaians.

He said: “At USAID, our approach is to educate communities on the importance of sanitation and let them take the lead. “Even groundbreaking hardware like the Digni-loo is not solution on its own, but sweeping sustainable change in Ghana will require millions of Ghanaians to change their behaviours,” Mr Jackson said.