Ghana needs a central tax system to sustain WASH

Fatima Anafu-Astanga

Bolgatanga, Nov.11, GNA - Mr Kweku Quansah, the Deputy Director, Ministry of Sanitation and Water Resources (MSRW) said Ghana needed a central taxing system to support issues of Water, Sanitation and Hygiene (WASH).

He said a sustainable financing system was critical for the country to achieve the Sustainable Development Goals on sanitation and indicated that sanitation problems far outweighed what government sought to fund in sanitation interventions.

“There is still a huge gap between finances mobilized as a country from government sources to implement Water, Sanitation, and Hygiene interventions and that of development partners and exactly how much is required to help provide facilities for every community in Ghana,” he said.

Mr Quansah made the suggestion in an interview with the Ghana News Agency at a stakeholders’ meeting on Water, Sanitation and Hygiene interventions in disaster prone communities (WASH DPC) in Bolgatanga in the upper East Region.

He said more discussions were ongoing on how to improve finance mobilization internally, as a way of ensuring a sustainable funding base for WASH activities as it benefits were immense and needed to reach out to other communities. 

He therefore appealed to development partners to find best ways to support and invest more in WASH so as to reach out to more communities.

“One of the bedrocks of the WASH DPC project is coordination and collaboration with National organizations in Ghana that intervene in similar WASH activities and at the regional levels where there are technical and interagency committee platforms working on the grounds together to ensure successful implementation of activities,” Mr Quansah said.

The joint UN WASH DPC project was implemented from 2014 to 2017 to improve health and livelihoods in 24 selected districts in the then three regions of the north with services targeted at 200,000 people including 50,000 school children in the communities.

It was funded by Global affairs Canada.

The project reached out to 271 communities out of 265 target communities, using the community led total sanitation (CLTs) approach.

Under the resilient water supply component of the project, all 265 communities that were targeted have achieved 100 per cent access to safe and sustainable water sources through interventions such as the development of 169 new water points, and the rehabilitation of 396 existing facilities compliant to flood prone designs.

GNA

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