A new set of data released by the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) said the poorest households in Ghana pay the highest for water and sanitation services.
The data titled Water, Sanitation, and Hygiene (WASH) UNICEF Country Program data released at a press briefing on Wednesday said the underlying cause of this paradox is the low access to WASH services, compelling poor households to spend on alternative services at a higher cost.
Less than one in every three households has household toilets, while 52 percent use shared toilets. Coupled with that, the data said three million households use sachet water daily, and one in every six households defecates in the open due to a lack of access.
The UNICEF data added that the situation results in fecal contamination of water sources, and three out of four households are at risk of drinking contaminated water.
The data indicated that poor households in Ghana spend a total of 370 million U.S. dollars on water and sanitation annually due to low access in the country.
“At least 23 percent of the poorest Ghanaian households spend 150 million dollars on paid-public toilets annually, and 37 percent spend 220 million on buying bagged sachet water for consumption,” Ramesh Bhusal, Chief of WASH at UNICEF Ghana, said during the release.
According to Bhusal, the costs of purchasing sachet water and using paid public toilets far outweighed the cost of water from state water utility services and the cost of constructing exclusive household toilets, leading to heavier cost burdens for the poor.
He urged the government to leverage the ability and willingness of these poorest households to pay for alternative services as the catalyst for these households to acquire reliable and more affordable services.
Bhusal also urged the government to increase investment in WASH from the current 0.14 percent of GDP to an appreciable level.
“Since WASH is among the top five sectors that have rippling effects on all the other Sustainable Development Goals, it is important for the government to prioritize WASH in its public investments,” he added.
Bhusal added, however, that all was not that gloomy, since the country also made some strides in developing the sector over the past six years.
He said that over the last six years, the national water policy, sanitation strategies, and WASH sector information systems have developed, adding that 175,000 more people have access to safe water, while 600 schools and more than 200 health facilities also have improved WASH access.
Also, he said 550,000 more people live in open defecation-free communities, and 75,000 more household toilets have been completed.