The government has been urged to expand investment in the water, sanitation, and hygiene (WASH) industry and to foster an environment that would encourage users and the private sector to make investments in long-term water and sanitation services.
Ramesh Bhusal, the chief in charge of WASH at UNICEF, urged the government to give the WASH sector priority, noting that the current public sector investment in WASH, which is estimated to be around $100 million per year, is "only a fraction of what is needed to achieve the Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) Six targets by 2030."
At a news conference held by the United Nations (UN) in Ghana to outline Ghana's current WASH accomplishments, difficulties, and initiatives to support those efforts, Mr. Bhusal was speaking about the SDG Six in advance of the joint Tajikistan-Netherlands-hosted UN 2023 Water Conference and Water Day celebration.
The theme of this year's World Water Day, "Accelerating Change to Tackle the Water and Sanitation Crisis," emphasizes the necessity of individual efforts to foster collaboration and partnerships that will speed up progress.
inadequate hygiene
According to Mr. Bhusal, "access to water and sanitation are human rights and the cornerstones for sustainable progress in any society," and Ghana needs to speed up access to securely managed water and sanitation in order to achieve balanced growth.
He praised Ghana for making sure that 88% of the population had access to basic water services, which is close to the world average of 90%, and that just 42% of people had access to securely managed water, which is below the global average.
Nevertheless, he voiced alarm over Ghana's extremely inadequate sanitation conditions, noting that 25% of the population had access to basic sanitation services, 57% used shared or public restrooms, and 18% defecated outside.
Inadequate sanitation conditions pose significant threats to the public's health.
According to the World Health Organization (WHO), there were 7,653 WASH-related fatalities in Ghana in 2019. "Almost one person dies from avoidable WASH-related diseases every hour," he stated.
According to him, the WASH situation in Ghana's northern regions is far worse than in the country as a whole.
dependable systems
Dr. Anthony Yaw Karikari, the deputy director of the Centre for Scientific and Industrial Research's Water Research Institute (CSIR-WRI), stated that the ineffective management of Ghana's water resources was negatively impacted by the lack of enforcement and implementation of policies and legal frameworks in the water sector.
Although Ghana has established institutions with helpful policies and legal frameworks, he claimed that "implementation and enforcement look to be hard," notwithstanding the country's progress in the water sector.
According to Dr. Karikari, there is an increasing number of people living in water-stressed and low-water areas in Ghana.
"Water sources are becoming contaminated and cannot be used for drinking or other uses without treatment as a result of the rise in human activities around rivers, such as illicit mining.
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