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Government has given a strong indication to change the appalling sanitation situation as it envisions the implementation of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDG’s), a critical catalyst in addressing poverty and ensuring social stability.

Access to improved sanitation by citizens continue to be a daunting challenge authorities have been grappling with over the years even as the country plays among the lowest in the world.

The Joint Management Platform (JMP) report of the World Health Organization and the United Nations Children Education Fund (UNICEF) places the country on a woeful 19 percent of access to improved sanitation notwithstanding an impressive 89 percent access to water.

Deputy Minister for Sanitation and Water Resources, Patrick Yaw Boamah, outlined a number of interventions he said forms part of the President’s Coordinated Programmes aimed at addressing the challenges of the sector.

“The President has revealed that Ghana has taken up the challenge of the SDGs, and has captured them in its co-ordinated programme for economic and social development policies, which is hinged towards the realisation of the SDGs, both at the national and local levels.”

The Deputy Minister was speaking at the official launch of the campaign on the Sustainable Development Goals: Goal Six, which is to ensure available and sustainable management of water and sanitation for all by 2030.

Some five million Ghanaians do not have access to any toilet facility making the country second to Sudan on the open defecation index in Africa, costing the nation US$79million aside the health dangers it poses, especially to the vulnerable and children.

But government hopes the implementation of the “Toilet for All” and “Water for All” programmes would make a huge difference.

Boamah also mentioned the promotion of a National Total Sanitation Campaign, establishment of a National Sanitation Fund and a scale up of investment in the sector as measures to tackle the situation.

The Minister used the occasion to encourage the private sector to actively invest in recycling and recovery plants in dealing with the plastic and electronic menace.

He said government has demonstrated commitment to the attainment of the SDGs also with the inauguration of a 15-member Inter-Ministerial Committee for the implementation of the United Nation’s SDG’s by the President, Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo, who is the co-Chair of the Advocacy Group of Eminent Persons.

He disclosed that public education will feature prominently accompanied by an effective solid waste management services to prevent filth into drains.

Mrs. Naa Atswei Oduro, an Ambassador for the Ministry of Sanitation and Water Resources, said she will use her position to ensure the menace of filth is brought down across the country by year 2030.

‘’We have set these targets and we will first of all visit the schools and communities to educate them on sanitation,’’ she assured.