By Rashid Mbugri, GNA
Tamale, Dec. 28, GNA - A research report has revealed that students in some public senior high schools (SHS) in the Northern Region practice open defecation due to poor toilet facilities.
It also identified poor Water, Sanitation and Hygiene (WASH) promotion in the schools due to unavailability of water, hand washing, sanitation and hygiene facilities.
Changing rooms in the schools for students in their menses and poor sanitation in dining halls, among other things, were also identified as some of the factors affecting students’ health and academic life, especially girls.
The WASH survey was conducted by the Northern Sector Action on Awareness Creation (NORSAAC), in collaboration with ActionAid Ghana, as well as the Young Female Parliaments (YFP) project, implemented in some public schools in the Region.
The YFP is a learning platform for young girls in the Northern Region established to address the participation of women and girls in leadership and decision making processes.
It was conducted in some SHSs including TAMASCO, Tamale Girls, Walewale, Wulensi, Gushegu, Yendi, Karaga, and Vitting SHSs.
The general objective of the survey was to gather and document credible evidence to advance advocacy with the Ghana Education Service and MMDAs on the standard of WASH facilities in senior high schools.
It was to provide reliable information to policy makers, programme managers and other relevant stakeholders to further strengthen WASH in schools.
Speaking at the validation of the findings with stakeholders, Mr Issah Aminu Danaa, the Monitoring and Evaluation Manager, NORSAAC, said the research sampled 100 students (77 per cent females and 23 per cent males) to answer some questionnaires, 20 teachers for Key informant interviews (KII) and 15 students for Focus Group Discussions (FGDs).
Mr Danaa said the survey, with focus on regular access to water in the schools, recorded 40 per cent of the respondent saying their main water sources function every day, whereas 33 per cent said they got water fewer than two times a week.
The students’ respondents said sometimes they attended classes without bathing due to water unavailability.
Most of the respondents said they had toilet facilities, however, the facilities were filthy, did not have sufficient lights, no anal cleaning materials and no hand washing facilities closer to the toilets.
That, Mr Danaa said, had resulted in the practice of open defecation by both male and female students, including some teachers in all schools studied.
“The toilet in our school is full and smelling. I think it has been full for the past three years. Since I reported to the school some two years ago, the toilet has been like that,” Mr Danaa quoted some of the respondents as saying.
The survey, therefore, recommended that the physical developments of schools must not only focus on classrooms, but pay attention to water systems, toilets and lighting situations and urinals.
It further recommended that the MMDAs and other interested parties should not exclude senior high schools in the computation of open defecation statistics.
Mr Alhassan Mohammed Awal, the Executive Director of NORSAAC, urged the participants, especially authorities and students of public schools, to change their behaviours to overcome the situation and create better WASH environment for everyone.
GNA
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