He said sanitation issues would no longer be taken for granted, and promised to push for urgent reforms to improve accountability and performance in the sector.

According to Mr Bless, Parlia­ment, through the Committee, would do everything possible to ensure that service providers delivered on their mandate, and the technocrats at the various Met­ropolitan, Municipal and District Assemblies (MMDAs) are involved in the process from the onset.

He made this known during a working tour of selected Municipal and District Assemblies in Accra, to gather data on sanitation issues and interact with the waste man­agement officials.
    

Mr Bless expressed concern that successive governments have consistently awarded sanitation contracts from the national level without the involvement of the local assemblies.

This, he said, had contributed to poor implementation and monitor­ing, despite the country spending heavily on sanitation each year.

“We support Ghanaian-owned businesses, but we must also ensure the right thing is done. You cannot be paid when the work is not being done. It is unfair to keep taking poor taxpayers’ money without showing results,” Mr Bless stated.

He said it was wrong for san­itation contracts to be signed in Accra, only to be forwarded to MMDAs for implementation with­out consultation.

According to Mr Bless, this approach has failed to yield results, and yet the local assemblies were always blamed for the poor state of sanitation in many areas.

He emphasised the need to involve the actual implementers, technocrats and local authorities in contract agreement process, to improve accountability and ensure better service delivery.

The Committee, Mr Bless said, would present a detailed report of their findings on the floor of Parliament, and continue to push for the passage of the long-awaited National Sanitation Authority Bill.

The bill, once passed, will consolidate all sanitation-related functions under one authority to improve coordination and efficien­cy, he explained.

Mr Bless said: “As a country, we invest a lot in sanitation, but supervision and monitoring have been very poor. The Committee will hammer hard on this issue on the floor of Parliament because it is unacceptable for the capital city to be littered with filth in the 21st century”.

He said that the Committee will continue its nationwide monitoring in all the 16 regions of the country, to ensure issues of sanitation and water resources are properly addressed.