Story by Yaaba Yamikeh
As part of activities marking this year’s World Clean Up Day, Gold Fields Ghana Foundation has handed over a 40,000-litre potable small town water supply system to residents of Huniso, a predominantly farming community in the Prestea-Hunivalley municipality of the Western Region.
Built at a cost of $ 31, 112. 24, the facility will provide reliable and safe water for households, schools and public institutions in the community and will also help address water challenges, reduce waterborne diseases, enhance personal cleanliness and improve overall community welfare.
Additionally, the facility will save the residents, particularly women and children, from daily ordeal of walking long distances to fetch water.
This year’s World Clean Up Day was held under the theme “strive for five” and focused on mobilizing five percent of the global population to participate, alongside a targeted awareness campaign on textile and fashion waste.
The Day also focused on promoting circular fashion with preventive healthcare as the core mission.
Clean-up
It is in line with this that some officials of Gold Fields Ghana Foundation joined residents of Huniso to undertake massive clean-up exercise during the day to rid their community of filth.
The residents were also sensitized on personal and environmental cleanliness to prevent outbreak or spread of communicable diseases in the area.
Madam Sandra Deladem Woanyah, Project Manager of the Foundation, said the Foundation was excited to be contributing to preventive healthcare in the host communities and noted that through such initiatives, the Foundation is fulfilling its mission of transforming lives beyond mining operations.
Massive investments
Madam Woanyah said the Foundation had invested heavily in the host communities with respect to health, education, agriculture, infrastructure and environmental development and will continue investing more to make life comfortable for the residents
She stressed that the Huniso project is tangible example of how sustainable infrastructure and collective action under a global theme are improving everyday life of the residents.
A Physician Assistant at the Samahu health center, Mr. Isaac Asante, bemoaned alarming rate of typhoid fever cases in the facility because of unhygienic environment.
He explained that typhoid fever is caused by indirect intake of human excreta and advised the residents, especially farmers, against open defecation.
He also advised mothers to promptly cover and dispose of the excreta of their young children as soon as they finish attending nature’s call-in chamber pots.
“Whenever human excreta are exposed, it finds its way into water bodies. Houseflies also feed on the excreta and transmit it onto uncovered food. So, you eat the food alongside the excreta resulting in typhoid fever’, he further explained.
Sanitation
Mr. Asante expressed optimism that provision of the water system by Gold Fields Ghana Foundation will go a long way in addressing sanitation issues in the community and urged the residents to take advantage of the facility to improve on personal and environmental hygiene.
He also urged them to regularly wash their hands with soap under running water to avoid any form of contamination.
The Environmental Officer for the Prestea- Huni valley municipal assembly, Mr. Kwabena Dramani, did not mince words in cautioning the residents that the assembly will not hesitate to institute legal action against anyone who violates waste management rules.
He reminded them that with re-introduction of a zero-tolerance policy, environmental officers will soon move from house to house to arrest and prosecute all violators at the law courts to serve as deterrent to others.
