Open defecation along the seashore; Exploring communication and stakeholders management as tools to reduce it in Teshie- Nungua, Accra
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Date
June, 2019
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Abstract
Community with a good sanitation practice is very important to human health. Therefore open
defecation along the seashore and the entirety of community is a bane to human health. This open
defecation kills children less than five years in the world every second. In Ghana for instance, it
costs the tourism industry millions of cedis. Ghana needs about USD79 million to control the
menace. Sadly, Ghana improves its sanitation only 1% yearly and Teshie-Nungua is one of the
urban communities that suffers seriously from open defecation menace especially those close to
the sea. Open ended questionnaires were used to collect data from respondents and the data was
analysed qualitatively. Purposive and convenience sampling techniques were used to select
respondents. The research revealed among others that non availability or inadequate toilet
facilities, attitudes or believes, distance/long queue, cost and filth are the components behind
people decisions to use seashore to defecate openly. Majority of the respondents also agreed that
the community had some interventions but some of them are not mostly used due to the filthy and
smelly, while some said the facilities are not enough and some were also far from some of the
residences. The study also revealed that most people agreed that communication can be used to
solve the problem; they however quicken to add that communication will be more effective if the
underlined intervention challenges are fixed. The study recommended that more toilet facilities
needed to be constructed and kept clean, more educations for the community members needed to
be intensified. A thorough consultation between community members and Ghana police service
should be done before personnel are discharged to the community and also more research needed
to be done to further identify more stakeholders to avoid escalating of the current open defecation
conditions arising from leadership gap.
Description
A thesis submitted to the Department of Construction Technology and Management, College of Arts and Built Environment in partial fulfillment of the requirement for the Degree of Master of Science .
Keywords
Open Defecation, Seashore, Exploring Communication, Stakeholders Management, Teshie- Nungua,