Last week, Water & Sanitation for the Urban Poor (WSUP) held a webinar to present insights from our ongoing work in improving sanitation in compounds in Kumasi and Ga West, Ghana.
Around 60% of low-income households use public toilets in Kumasi. These facilities are often poorly maintained, unhygienic and unsafe, particularly for women using them at night. Rapid urbanisation in Ghana means that it is imperative to find a better way to meet the sanitation needs of the country’s low-income city-dwellers.
We have been working with the Kumasi Metropolitan Assembly and the Ga West Municipal Authority, on a five year programme to improve sanitation at the compound level. The work is supported by USAID’s Sanitation Service Delivery (SSD) program which is implemented by PSI in partnership with PATH and WSUP.
During the webinar, participants heard from:
- Georges Mikhael, WSUP Head of Sanitation
- Richard Amaning, SNV WASH Financing Expert
- Frank Romeo Kettey, WSUP Ghana Project Manager
- Moderator: Sam Drabble, WSUP Research and Evaluation Manager
At the heart of the five year strategy is a goal to encourage more investment in toilets within compounds. In the webinar, we presented our progress so far, and discussed challenges such as:
- Improving the ability of toilet manufacturers in Ghana to scale up
- Making toilets desirable enough for households to be interested in investing
- Providing access to finance for households (given that a toilet can cost between $300 and $1200)
- Improving the capacity of the public sector to enforce by-laws that require landlords to provide toilets for their tenants