The Akatsi North District in the Volta region has placed a ban on funerals and other social activities on every first week of the month in a bid to shore up participation in the monthly National Sanitation Day exercise.

This was announced by District Chief Executive for the area, James Gunu in an interview with Joynews on the sidelines of Saturday’s exercise.

“We cease granting burial permits to people who want to organize funerals on the National Sanitation Day….because we want everybody to participate in this exercise” he said.

The DCE stated that the decision was taken in consultation with traditional rulers. James Gunu also explained that the district has included tree-planting exercises.

According to the DCE, the trees will serve as windbreaks as the District is a low lying coastal plain with flatland in the South and rolling plain to the North.

The ban on funerals is expected to resonate with the Local Government Ministry which has given a 7 day ultimatum to District, Municipal and Metropolitan authorities to submit a proposal on how to sustain the exercise.

In the Central Region which hosted the national exercise, Minister of local government and rural development Collins Dauda challenged local government appointees to do more to whip up support.

Government is keen to ensure that public support for the sanitation does not falter after a record participation when it was launched last November.

The National Sanitation Day exercise is a 9-month old exercise launched by government to deal with filthy in communities after a cholera outbreak in 2014 exposed the country’s poor sanitation culture.