The perennial outbreak of Cholera in Accra and other major cities in the country provides unambiguous evidence on how sanitation issues have generally been belittled in Ghana. Our streets continue to be littered with waste, gutters choked with waste, excreta dumped without treatment into open spaces and waterbodies, and above all, our beaches 'adorned' with human excreta.

Sanitation coverage nationwide has merely appreciated by 8% within the past two and half decades instead of the target increase of 47% resulting in the spread of sanitation-related diseases. Heaps of refuse still blot the beauty of our city centres and the reprehensible squalor that characterises our beaches are enough to scare tourists and holiday makers away. How can we rake in the full benefits tourism brings if we cannot simply keep a clean environment? Undoubtedly, all these cast a slur on our lower middle income status and impede efforts aimed at protecting public health, ensuring environmental sustainability and eventually catapulting the country to an upper middle income status.

It is generally argued that, the lack of financial and technical resources coupled with poor public attitudes have collectively contributed to crippling the sanitation sector. However, apart from these widely reported factors known to constrain our ability to make strides in the sanitation sector, the absence of a ministry solely dedicated to spearheading the affairs of water, sanitation and environment in an integrated fashion also poses a huge challenge. The poor institutional framework currently in place is a huge challenge to ensuring the needed improvement in the sector. Over the years, efforts in the water and sanitation sector have been largely prejudiced towards water as compared to sanitation and this partly explains why the national Millennium Development Goal  target for the water sector has been achieved even before the 2015 deadline while that of sanitation lags far behind. This has been caused by the puzzling institutional framework currently in place to direct the affairs of both sectors.

Per the framework, the Environmental Health and Sanitation Directorate under the Ministry of Local Government and Rural Development has the mandate to develop sanitation policies with the support of the Ministry and ensure that local assemblies implement them. Incredibly, the Directorate is under a Ministry that primarily exists to promote the establishment and development of a vibrant and well-resourced decentralized system of local government for the people of Ghana to ensure good governance and balanced rural-based development. Has sanitation got anything to do with decentralization? It would have been understandable if this directorate was paired with water or health since it has a strong correlation with these two. Worse still, the Community Water and Sanitation Agency, which has the mandate to facilitate the provision of safe drinking water and related sanitation services to rural communities and small towns in Ghana is under the Ministry of Water Resources Works and Housing. Under this same Ministry, is the Water Resources Commission, the Water Directorate and the Ghana Water Company Limited while the Environmental Protection Agency, responsible for protecting and improving the environment - air, land and water, also works under Ministry of Environment, Science, Technology and Innovation.

A critical analysis of this framework clearly underpins the fact that the scale is tipped against sanitation. Whilst the water sector has its key agencies under one ministry, the sanitation sector has its agencies scattered under three different ministries. Meanwhile, issues bothering on water, sanitation and the environment are interconnected as the United Nations' Millennium Development Goal 7 shows. To achieve, environmental sustainability, it is very crucial that water, sanitation and environmental issues are managed in an integrated manner.

The current brouhaha between the Environmental Sanitation Policy and the Accra Metropolitan Assembly regarding the dumping of human excreta into the sea at Lavendar Hill is an epitome of challenges associated with the current institutional framework. Attributable to the lack of co-ordinated planning, all efforts have been focused on providing a functional water supply system for residents of Accra without concurrently planning for the disposal of the inevitable wastewater that would result eventually. This is because, the Ministry that plans for the development of the water supply systems is entirely different from the Ministry that takes care of the resulting wastewater. It is public knowledge that, the supply of water to any community certainly results in the production of wastewater emanating from kitchens, washrooms, among others and therefore there should be measures to cater for this as well. However, as symbolised by the situation in Accra and other parts of the country, attention is largely focused on providing potable water to residents without the accompanying infrastructure to handle the resultant wastewater.

Without a stretch of imagination, it becomes obvious that the disjointed manner in which issues related to  water, sanitation and the environment are handled is a huge misstep. The current stand-alone policies and the associated action plans currently being implemented under different ministries would perpetually thwart attempts to ensure environmental sustainability. The water sector has its own policy, the National Water Policy, developed in 2007 while the sanitation sector has the National Environmental Sanitation Policy developed in 1999 and revised in 2009. Evidently, the non-synchronous manner in which these policies were developed speaks volumes about the cohesion between them. It is time for policy makers to wake up to the fact that, issues related to water, sanitation and the environment can only be effectively dealt with in an integrated and co-ordinated manner. For instance, the disposal of human excreta into water courses and the unbridled disposal of solid waste eventually result in pollution of water resources which clearly has adverse repercussions on aquatic life, drinking water and public health. Therefore, how can we protect water courses without first ensuring safe disposal of human excreta and solid waste? Perceivably, providing potable drinking water to the public cannot be ensured if the environment is polluted with human excreta and solid waste. This is one of the many reasons why there is the need for concerted efforts to tackle these issues squarely.

Moving forward, it is imperative that all agencies directly linked to water, sanitation and environment, viz. Water Resources Commission, Community Water and Sanitation Agency, Environmental Protection Agency, Water Directorate and the Environmental Health and Sanitation Directorate  are decoupled from their current ministries and placed under one umbrella - a Ministry of Water, Sanitation and Environment. This would streamline efforts aimed at ensuring environmental sustainability due to co-ordinated planning and the possible consequential synergies.

Author: Isaac Monney (monney.isaac@gmail.com)

Lecturer

Department of Environmental Health and Sanitation Education

University of Education, Winneba