Moves to Improve Public Toilet - KMA Holds Workshop

The Kumasi Metropolitan Assembly (KMA), in collaboration with Water and Sanitation for the Urban Poor (WSUP) has been working to develop approaches that will bring about city-wide improvements in the quality of public toilet service in the Kumasi metropolis.

Ernst and Young for some time now has been engaged with funding from the Public Private Infrastructure Advisory Facility (PPIAF) of the World Bank to conduct a pre-feasibility study and develop a financial model to facilitate effective and efficient private sector participation.

To this end, a day's workshop was jointly held at the Golden Tulip Hotel in Kumasi by the KMA and the Public Private Infrastructure Advisory Facility (PPIAF) of the World Bank to discuss the findings of Ernst and Young's assignment with the view to exploiting how such a potential may be exploited bearing in mind the respective risk, returns and responsibilities by the KMA and other stakeholders.

The mayor of Kumasi, Hon. Kojo Bonsu in his welcome address said the workshop was timely in view of the fact that the number of approved public toilets in the metropolis did not match the increasing population since it was common in the city where landlords convert toilet apartments into living rooms and the defecating and dumping of solid waste into drains as well as the bad conditions of some public toilets which compel people to go for open or free range defecation.

According to him, the Water and Sanitation for the Urban Poor (WSUP) has partnered KMA in the mapping of over 250 sanitary sites with about 400 public toilet blocks uploaded onto the Internet which could be accessed at Google and attempts to fashion out a financial model that seeks to address some challenges bedeviling the Build Operate and Transfer (BOT) contract arrangement as well as a series of capacity building interventions which are all geared towards improving the provision of public toilets in Kumasi.

Mr. Anthony Mensah, the Director of the Waste Management Department of KMA hinted that almost 40% of the population of Kumasi relied on public toilets and was therefore confident that the programme would yield positive results. He added that cleanliness, convenience and safety were the three fundamental needs required of the old and new public toilet facilities.

Andrew Jones, a representative from the PPIAF and PID in his presentation, said the KMA's task was to monitor and evaluate the services of the private sector partners on daily basis.