The World Bank has approved $125 million to support a five-year project of the Ministry of Sanitation and Water Resources (MSWR) to build the capacities of its environmental officers to prosecute sanitation offences in courts.
In 2015, the World Bank provided funds for the project to be piloted in the Greater Accra and Ashanti regions with $150 million over a five-year period.
The Programme Manager of the MSWR, Charlotte Akwaah Adjei Marfo, disclosed this at the end of a two-day workshop for 40 environmental officers drawn from two regions in the week-end.
She emphasized that enforcement of sanitation laws would go a long way to improve sanitation conditions in the country which would help prevent disasters such as floods, when it rained. The workshop for environmental officers drawn from the Upper West and East regions marked the take-off of the second phase of the project scheduled to end in 2024.
Some of the topics discussed at the workshop were the jurisdiction of the courts, code of ethics for the environmental health prosecutors, summary trial of cases, drafting of summons and charge sheets among others.
The project is in line with the government’s strategy to achieve the Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) 6. The Regional Head of the Environmental Health and Sanitation Directorate, Freda Naah called on officers to take the workshop seriously since they would ensure the neatness of their communities.
Mrs Naah said prosecution of offenders had not been enforced over the years, hence “we can see such things such as mountains of rubbish and choked gutters in our communities.”