National Sanitation Day was set aside for all MMDAs by the President to observe on every first Saturday of each month. In the light of this, the Nkoranza South Municipal Assembly sees sanitation as a key factor to development and therefore needs to be practiced in all aspect of human life. For this reason, the focus was on communities in the Nkoranza Zonal Council, areas such as market square, the Nkoranza Community and refuse disposal site were cleaned.
The exercise begun at 7.00 am and closed at about 11:00am. In attendance were, the Assembly Members of the electoral areas, a representative from the Municipal Environmental Health Office, Unit committee members and one hundred and forty -six community members (66 males and 72 females).
The Presiding Member, in his address urged the community members to uphold the interest of commitment in relations to good sanitation and hygiene practices. He added that good sanitation practices prevent a lot of communicable diseases such as cholera, typhoid and other sicknesses which are sanitation related. He further entreats the community members to closely watched and be a guard to prevent people from defecating openly.
The Honorable in his concluding speech expressed gratitude to the entire community and the leaders for their coming out despite their busy schedules.
The Environmental Health and Sanitation Officer in his speech begged the community members to change their attitudes and behaviors and show deep commitment toward communal labor. He said this is the best way they can unite to maintain and keep their community from dirt’s and also enchased diseases outbreaks. According to Sanitary, cleanliness of a community was not the sole responsibility of one person but rather a collective approached and full commitment of its members. He concluded his speech by expressing delight at the participants for their time spent on the clean-up exercise and entreat them to remain resolute towards such event since it is the only way to ensure the safety of their community environment.
The final speech to the participants was made also a representative from the Nkoranza Municipal Environmental Health Office. His address was mainly focus on maintaining the communal clean up exercise and not wait for directive from the Assembly before organizing it. He emphasized on the need to construct household latrine and edged the participants to have one in their homes or else will be prosecuted and make frequent hand washing as part of their lives. He said there are four major ways to prevent feco-oral transmission.
This includes; having personal Household Latrine, practicing frequent Hand washing with soap, drinking from safe water sources and maintaining a very good environmental hygiene practices.
He added that the Environmental Health office is ready to offer advice to individual, groups on sanitation related problems and entreat the community members to report any person whose behaviors undermine the safety of the environment to the office for them to be punish according to the law.
In conclusion, the event was a successful one and it is the hope of the Environmental Health Officers that other communities within the municipality continue to observe the day as such so that the entire municipality will be free from dirt’s.