The Catholic Relief Services (CRS) has been commended for supporting the formulation of the Citywide Sanitation Plan in the Sagnarigu Municipality in the Northern Region. The Municipal Chief Executive for Sagnarigu, Mr. Yakubu Ahmed Mohammed, expressed the gratitude of the municipal assembly to CRS for providing technical guidance and capacity building training of enumerators for the data collection, analysis and developing a Shift Flow Diagram for the development of the WASH plan.
The Sagnarigu MCE at the launch of the Citywide Sanitation Plan on Tuesday (July 5, 2022) called on all stakeholders to support the operationalization of the plan and help improve the sanitation situation in the municipality.
Mr. Ahmed indicated the readiness of the assembly to work with development partners and private sector operators to provide adequate and sustainable financing for Water, Sanitation and Hygiene (WASH) services within the municipality.
“It is my hope that with the sanitation gaps identified, development partners, private sector players and other stakeholders would collaborate with the assembly to address these gaps during their project designs and implementation” he added.
The Citywide Sanitation Plan is an inclusive WASH Action Plan prepared through consultative and participatory process involving key sector stakeholders at both District and Regional levels.
According to the MCE, the plan builds extensively on existing documents which includes the Rural/Urban Sanitation Model and Strategy and National Sanitation Strategy and Action Plan, adding the plan identifies key WASH challenges within the municipality.
He said it also provides strategic interventions to improve the WASH outlook of the Sagnarigu municipality reiterating the commitment of the assembly to improve the WASH situation in the area.
Sagnarigu situation
Meanwhile, the data collection exercise and Shift Flow Diagram (SFD) revealed significant gaps along both the solid waste and liquid waste service value-chain.
Open defecation, disposal of liquid waste in unauthorized places, uncontrolled operation of fecal sludge manual desludgers, inadequate monitoring of service providers’ operations and poor conditions of public toilets and poor management of solid waste characterized the service value-chain.
50 per cent of the public toilets were poorly managed and unclean with only 12 per cent of public toilets with hand washing facilities.
In view of this, stakeholders at the launch called for attitudinal change and enforcement of the bye-laws to clampdown on the alarming state of insanitary conditions in the municipality.
