A massive operational overhaul of sanitation management in the Ho Municipality is underway.
It is meant to rollback sanitation practices across all areas to sustainable levels.
Samuel Galley, Ho Municipal Director of the Environmental Health Unit, told the Ghana News Agency (GNA), Friday that the strategies are a mix of education on best practices and prosecutions.
The interview was to highlight the state of sanitation in the municipality ahead of Volta Region hosting the March edition of the national sanitation day.
It covered sanitation issues in the domestic and office settings, markets, food hygiene, drains, toilets and attitudes.
Mr Galley said two task forces had been formed, one on sanitation, and the other on food hygiene and that the Unit had projected to exceed the 3,000 food vendors screened last year.
He appealed to patrons of way-side-foods, especially ready to eat foods to insist on hygienic handling and packaging.
Currently roasted plantain and yam for example are rolled into old newspapers before being tucked into miniature polythene carriers.
Mr Galley conceded that the focus of his unit had been on homes, leaving offices where there could be many sanitation law violations as well.
“Yes we have the authority to inspect offices and other public places, counsel them and even recommend their closure,” he stated.
Mr Galley said his Unit was bracing up to tackle perhaps the paramount cause of the poor sanitation practices, attitudes, with alluring methods to win the people over.
“To begin, the Unit had proposed the formation of Sanitation Clubs in schools, whose members would infect others with the good practices learnt,” he said.
On toilets, Mr Galley said the situation where residents and not the transient population were the main patrons of public toilets, must be reversed.
He said his Unit was in discussions with the Assembly for a bylaw that all residences must have toilets.
Mr Galley said he was about selling the idea of “garbage sorting” for adoption.
“With this method, garbage is segregated and in many cases recycled,” he said.
Mr Galley said the Unit had huge logistics problems, no vehicle for monitoring and staff very much below the UN recommended ratios per population.
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