A Community Leader in Yaryasa village of Tudun Wada Local Government Area of Kano State, Alhaji Alhassan Yaryasa, has advised northern state governors to restore the services of sanitary inspectors in their respective states to tackle environmental sanitation challenges.
Yaryasa made the call during an interview with Arewa PUNCH in Kano.
He said the reintroduction of sanitary inspectors is necessary to ensure that houses and surroundings are clean and tidy.
According to him, the sanitary inspectors who usually carry out house-to-house sanitation inspection would ensure that houses, especially those in the rural areas of the region, are equipped with toilet facilities to discourage indiscriminate open defecation.
“Open defecation is still a common feature particularly in rural areas, and in uncompleted buildings and plots of land in the cities across the region So, if there are sanitary inspectors they will be able to control this ugly trend,” he said.
He advised that in the alternative, the state government could introduce penalty for open defecation offenders in their respective states so as to check the ugly trend, which still thrives in many northern states.
Arewa PUNCH recalls that in February 2022, the United Nations Children’s Fund supported 10 local government areas in Kano State to attain the status of Open Defecation Free.
Yaryasa noted further, “Government should come up with a law to punish those who engage in open defecation because of the way and manner those in rural communities engage in the bad habit.”
According to him, the state government should also engage the services of private developers to build public toilets in rural areas and charge affordable fees from those who patronise them.
“State governments can allow private developers to build public conveniences in the local government areas so that they can pay stipend before they are used.
“The Kano State government had in the past constructed a number of such public toilets as part of measures to tackle the menace of open defecation in markets and motor parks where the habit is rampant,” Yaryasa reminded.
“The level of open defecation in the state and the entire north should be a serious concern to the governments and other key stakeholders in order to check the outbreak of diseases.
“I feel it is necessary to call for the reintroduction of the monthly environmental sanitation exercise in view of its importance to our environmental health.
“The reintroduction of the exercise in Kano State by the previous administration has checked the rampant dumping of refuse in public places within the city, a habit, which was hitherto the order of the day,” he added.
Also, Mrs Stella Okafor-Terver, the Water Sanitation and Hygiene (WASH) Officer for UNICEF Kano Field Office, had equally pointed this out in
Kano on Monday during a two-day training of State Task Group on Sanitation (STGS) on open defecation in the state.
The UNICEF official who was then in the Kano Field Office listed the local government areas that befitted from the gesture to include – Madobi, Takai, Gaya, Kabo, Dawakin Tofa, Danbatta, Wudil, Sumaila, Garko and Doguwa.
