The Ministry of Sanitation and Water Resources says it will soon deploy some 200 sanitation prosecutors to various courts across the country.
According to the Sanitation Ministry, the prosecutors are tasked to deal with sanitation offences in the various Metropolitan, Municipal and District Assemblies.
Sampson Akwetey, the officer in charge of sanitation at the ministry said the move is to effectively fight insanitary conditions in the country.
Mr. Akwetey gave the hint when speaking to journalists during a clean-up and sensitization exercise for selected MMDAs in Accra.
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Speaking on behalf of the ministry, he said the exercise forms part of its efforts to achieve a cleaner Ghanaian environment.
The sanitation officer said the ministry with respect to the exercise selected a number of communities to sensitize and educate residents on the need to undertake regular clean up in their neighborhood.
“We selected a number of communities to sensitize, educate and support them so that they will be able to do regular cleaning in their communities.
We want to encourage people to make cleaning a daily habit and not wait for some state fixed dates before cleaning their environment’’, Sampson Akwetey explained.
He disclosed that the sanitation prosecutors to be deployed are well trained in environmental health laws of Ghana as well as sanitation by-laws of the various assemblies.
He observes that law enforcement on sanitation laws and by-laws will continue to be a mirage if sanitation related offences are not handled by well-trained prosecutors for the job.
“It is very difficult for environmental health officers to handle sanitation cases in court and win. That’s why we are engaging environmental health prosecutors trained to be conversant with sanitation and environmental heath offense prosecutions’’.
Mr. Akwetey said one hundred of the sanitation prosecutors have been trained this year.
With just seven years to the 2030 deadline, Ghana is nowhere close to fulfilling its global pledge to ensure access to basic sanitation for all its citizens.
According to the World Health Organization (WHO) and the United Nations International Children’s Emergency Fund (UNICEF), less than a quarter of the Ghanaian population has access to basic sanitation.
