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The national sanitation campaign initiated by the Graphic Communications Group Limited (GCGL), in collaboration with Zoomlion Ghana Limited (ZGL), has entered the second phase, with the maiden league table of the cleanest regions expected to be released by May, this year.
This follows the successful implementation of the first phase of the campaign which focused on stakeholder engagement, policy conversations and clean-up campaigns across the regions.
As part of the Graphic-Zoomlion Cleanest Region Ranking, all 16 regions in the country will be ranked according to how efficiently waste is managed by the metropolitan, municipal and district assemblies (MMDAs) within their jurisdictions.
The rankings will be done using parameters such as availability of solid waste infrastructure, access to sanitation and hygiene facilities, prevalence of litter and illegal dumps; enforcement of environmental regulation and community involvement.
Others are the use of technology solutions, availability of green spaces and urban planning, waste data and metrics, as well as contracts and permits. To facilitate the process, the Director, Marketing and Sales at the GCGL, Franklin Sowa, led a team to the Ministry of Sanitation and Water Resources (MSWR) last Thursday to seek support for the project.
The MSWR team, led by the Chief Director, Noah Tumfo, assured the GCGL team of their utmost support for the initiative.
Mr Sowa explained that the engagement with the sanitation ministry was to ensure that a committee of experts in that sector was constituted to do an on-ground assessment for the rankings, using parameters that had been developed.
"For these rankings, 60 per cent of the weightings will be under technical assessment based on data the experts generate on the ground, while 40 per cent will be by public voting.
"We will be announcing the rankings every month until the end of the year and we want the ratings to be as objective as possible so that everyone will see that they reflect the state of sanitation in the regions," he said.
He added that alongside the league table, data would be shared on the inputs that went into the rankings, as well as best practices to improve on sanitation.
Mr Sowa said the GCGL was also working with related ministries such as the Local Government, Decentralisation and Rural Development, and Health, as well as all regional ministers and relevant stakeholders in the regions to ensure a collective approach to the initiative.
"The ranking has been launched in the Volta regional capital - Ho; we have done engagement in Koforidua, the Eastern regional capital, just before the Independence celebration on March 6; we are doing strategic stakeholder engagement with the relevant ministries and other classical institutions which have a role to play in this endeavour.
"We believe that if we collectively work across related institutions and bring everyone on board, we can improve sanitation in the country," he said.
Touching on the incentive systems for the rankings, Mr Sowa said enormous opportunities would open to regions that were favourably ranked. He said the most insightful incentive were the bragging rights of being the cleanest region.
"What that means is that you can attract tourists to your region; you can save money that you would have spent to treat sanitation-related diseases to do other things that are of essential need," he said.
For his part, Mr Tumfo described the sanitation campaign by GCGL as a progressive move that would give impetus to the efforts being made to rid the country of filth.
In that regard, he said the ministry would play a pivotal role to ensure the success of the campaign by providing both financial and technical support to GCGL. “For us as a ministry, we want to take advantage of any initiative that will help us to reach out to citizens to understand that sanitation is an everyday thing that needs a collective effort to tackle.
“Therefore, we are happy to collaborate with the GCGL to champion this cause so that citizens will be aware and act to improve sanitation,” he said. Mr Tumfo called on other stakeholders to come on board to support initiatives that were targeted at improving sanitation in the country.
He emphasised that sanitation was a shared responsibility and needed all actors in the value chain to play their part well to help make the country clean. Mr Tumfo urged MMDAs to live up to their mandate of implementing policies and interventions that would help to improve sanitation.
“As a ministry, we are a policy unit; we do not do implementation of interventions. So, if you see choked gutters or refuse in the drains, it is not the responsibility of the ministry. We have policies in place to address sanitation but the responsibility to implement the policies stops with the MMDAs,” he said.
