The Sagnarigu Municipal Assembly in collaboration with the Catholic Relief Services (CRS) has launched the Municipal Sanitation Sales Bazaar today Tuesday (August 16, 2022) as part efforts to improve sanitation in the municipality in line with the recently launched Citywide Sanitation Action Plan.
The Sanitation Sales Bazaar seeks to provide an enabling environment for all sector players and development partners to sell to the public their products and services to improve on the sanitation and hygiene practices within the Municipality.
It will offer the public an opportunity to access and use sanitation and hygiene products and services for the practices of basic sanitation at the household level.
The Municipal Chief Executive for Sagnarigu, Ahmed Yakubu Mohammed, speaking during the launch at the forecourt of the Sagnarigu Chief Palace said the area is still confronted with issues of open defecation, poor sanitation service delivery, poor sanitation facilities, unsafe management of liquid waste and sludge as well as poor management of solid waste.
“Current data available shows that only 21% (15731) households out of 73,653 households own and use latrines and 23% (16,940) of households own dustbins. Obviously, in this age and time, a good proportion of our people still defecate in the open and dump solid waste at unauthorized places” he lamented.
The Sagnarigu MCE noted the assembly is currently rank 13th among 16 MMDAs in the Northern Region on the Regional Sanitation League Table and further pointed out that the repugnant behavioral practices where people build houses without sanitary facilities and the indiscriminate dumping of refuse by occupants of those houses undermines growth of the nation as many lives and resources are lost daily.
The CRS Head of Office for the Northern Sector, Timothy Amangbe, “We want to ensure that sanitation management options are available to each and every one and we’re doing this with the aim to support the project participants and beneficiaries to be able to access affordable sanitation management options to improve the health of the people particularly children.”
Affordability
Mr. Timothy Amangbe explained the cost of the items range between GHS200 and GHS1,500 depending on the preferred sanitation options chosen by a household based on their income levels.
“Sanitation cannot be tackled in one way and we’re doing this to push forward – so that we can create demand and businesses out of this initiative; once we trigger the community to become aware of wanting to live in a good sanitation then they would look forward for the options that are available and these are local artisans and when they supply, they can make money out of it” he stated.
The Marketing Director of Global Community, an Organization into Water, Sanitation and Hygiene (WASH), Mr. Joshua Ofosuhene said they were excited to partner with the Sagnarigu Municipal Assembly, the CRS among other development partners to build the capacity of communities to improve the sanitation situation in the municipality.
