Waste management company, Zoomlion Ghana Limited, has reached out with its senior high and technical schools sanitation awareness programme to further intensify and inculcate in students the habit and hobby of environmental cleanliness and personal hygiene among other things.
A Senior Communications Specialist of the company, Adams, Mohammed Mahama, who is an alumni of the school in a presentation, entreated the young men and women to be responsible and play the role of sanitation ambassadors in their school and communities while on holidays.
He stressed that Zoomlion and government were collaborating to transform the waste management industry, and thus urged the students to contribute their quota by changing from the unpatriotic attitude of the Ghanaian against waste management to a more responsible and acceptable sanitation focused attitudes going forward.
Zoomlion has established ultra-modern integrated recycling and composting plants (IRECoPs) in Accra, Kumasi and was also in the process of constructing similar projects in the remaining (14) fourteen regions to ensure that we create value out of the waste we generate by recycling them to help keep Ghana clean," Adams said.
In this regard, he said Zoomlion has partnered the Ghana Education Service (GES) to intensify a sanitation awareness and improvement programme to ensure the total wellbeing of students in some selected senior high and technical schools across the country.
He appealed to the students to have it at the back of their minds that being obedient in school and at home will lead them to become responsible adults.
Also you should study your books and pass your exams very well to be able to further your education while making good environmental sanitation practice a priority, he advised.
The Ekumfi District SHEP Coordinator, Richard Boatey, while addressing the students appealed to them to consider personal hygiene as the starting point to being environmental sanitation ambassadors.
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He said as Ghana has chalked a remarkable success in the supply of good and potable water of over 73 per cent, it has done terribly at only 13 per cent at the sanitation level in order to achieve the Sustainable Development Goals in the WASH sector.
Another Communications expert at Zoomlion, Francis Atayure Abirigo, on behalf of his company donated some waste bins to the school.
He urged the school’s staff members and students to inculcate the habit of dropping solid waste into the waste bins.
Abirigo assured the school that Zoomlion will continue to support their sanitation needs to train more responsible adults like Adams Mohammed Mahama.
Earlier the Komenda-Edina-Eguafo-Abirem (KEEA) Municipal SHEP Coordinator of the Ghana Education Service (GES), Madam Amuesiwah Daniels, during a presentation to students of Edinaman Senior High School complained about how Ghana was seriously lagging behind as total access to sanitation was at only 13%.
She stated that "Children lose 272 million school days each year due to diarrhoea globally and an estimated one in three school-aged children in the developing world are infested with intestinal worms".
Madam Daniels retorted that these illness promote low school attendance and stunting growth as a result of malnutrition and poor academic performance which was a worry to the GES.
She said "Effective behaviour change programmes such as Zoomlion's was critical to the success and sustainability of all water, sanitation and hygiene interventions.
She urged schools to practise handwashing with soap, safe handling of drinking water, safe excreta disposal, environmental sanitation and personal hygiene including menstrual hygiene," among the female students.
A set of waste bins were also donated to the Edinaman Senior High School for the use of staff and students by Zoomlion Ghana Limited.
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