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African leaders urged to pay more attention to
water and sanitation issues
Accra, July 4, Ghanadot/GNA – The
Coalition of NGOs in Water and Sanitation (CONIWAS), on
Thursday noted that water and sanitation issues were
slipping back on the agenda of the African Union and
reminded governments to keep the promises they made last
year to the sector.
Mr Patrick Apoya, Coordinator of CONIWAS recalled that, last
year the African Union summit focused on water and
sanitation issues and leaders, who attended the summit, made
commitments to accelerate progress towards water and
sanitation goals, however, little or no action had been
taken to ensure that African countries implement the
commitments.
The 13th African Union Summit, which started July 1, 2009 in
Sirte, Libya is expected to end on July 3, 2009. It is being
organised on the theme: “Investing in Agriculture for
Economic Growth and Food Security.”
Mr Apoya expressed the concerns at a meeting jointly
organised by his organisation and Water Aid, a
non-governmental organisation to brief the media on the
progress made in the water and sanitation sector since the
commitment were made at the summit last year.
“Access to safe water and sanitation topped the summit’s
agenda last year when African leaders made a historic pledge
to turn around dismal progress, however, it seems the
reality and the rhetoric do not match,” he said.
Mr Stephen Ntow, WaterAid Country Representative, admitted
that there had been little action since the last AU summit
and said about 780,000 children have died of diarrhoea in
Africa since the last summit.
He said about 546 million people in Africa, which
constituted about two-thirds of Africa’s population do not
have access to safe sanitation and 221 million people
defecate in the open.
“About 328 million people do not have access to safe source
of water,” he said stressing that in Ghana there were 9,900
child deaths from diarrhoea according to the 2009 UNICEF
statistics.
Mr Ntow noted that failure to achieve the Millennium
Development Goals on Water and Sanitation would have serious
economic cost to the tune of about 15 billion dollars a year
as well as a tragic human cost looking at the high diarrhoea
mortality rate in children under age five.
Mr Ibrahim Musah, Policy and Research Officer at WaterAid
Ghana, emphasised the need for governments to fully
implement and monitor commitments on water and sanitation.
He said: “African governments must work closely with
international counterparts like the Group of Eight (G8)
countries to strengthen the global framework for action on
water and sanitation.”
GNA
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