Jacob Alibinde Assogunde, District Chief Executive, has told journalists who visited some communities in the district to verify the state of the Community Led Total Sanitation (CLTS) drive.

In Kordiabenum Nyarko, Kukurantumi New town and Papase Junction, every household has its toilet with hand-washing devices made with simple local materials. Fines have also been instituted against open defecation.

Additionally, signposts have been erected on entering those communities warning visitors against open defecation. Visitors are, consequently, allowed free access to any toilet in the communities.

Community spokespersons testified that diarrhea and toilet related diseases and hospital visitations in relation to those diseases, which were common before 2012 were now absent. The story was the same at Debidebi and Kpando-Gadza in the Kpando District.

The United Nations International Children’s Emergency Fund (UNICEF) and the Government have since 2012 been sponsoring the CLTS drive to rid 30 Open Defecation (OD) endemic districts in Ghana of the practice under a Water Sanitation and Hygiene (WASH) Programme.  

The communities are in the Volta, Central, Northern, Upper-East and Upper-West Regions.Mr Assogunde said there were 7,487 people in the district using household latrines. He expressed optimism that the district would attain the 2015 target because the communities were enthusiastic about the goal and had adopted a competitive mentality towards the programme.

 Mr Assogunde said the communities own the CLTS programme because they were directly involved in identifying the problems it sought to solve, and in devising local solutions which were bringing them direct benefits. He said the District would this year organize an award ceremony to honour communities, which had won national awards at the recent International Toilet Day celebration for achieving ODF status. 

He commended Mr Reuben Azialeku, the District Environmental Health Officer, and his team at both the district and local levels, for their enthusiasm and sacrifices towards ensuring the high level of success achieved by the district. 

The CLTS has four levels of attainment; these are Basic ODF for communities committed to becoming, ODF, communities which have achieved ODF, Sanitized ODF for communities, which have been ODF for one year, and Sustained Sanitized ODF, for maintaining ODF for three straight years.   

Mr Francis Abotsi, retired Volta Regional Environmental Health Officer, who superintended the CLTS campaign from 2012 until November 2014, expressed happiness at the declaration made by Kadjebi to be the first to achieve ODF in Ghana. 

He expressed the hope that other District Chief Executives in the region would emulate the leadership example shown in the Kadjebi District.