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 holiday.
He stressed that Zoomlion and government are 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 regarding waste management to a more responsible and acceptable sanitation-focused attitude going forward.
“Zoomlion has established ultra-modern integrated recycling and composting plants (IRECoPs) in Accra and Kumasi, and is also in the process of constructing similar projects in the remaining (14) fourteen regions to ensure we create value out of the waste we generate by recycling them to help keep Ghana clean,” Mr. Adams said.
In this regard, he said, Zoomlion has partnered the Ghana Education Service (GES) to intensify a sanitation awareness and improvement programme that ensures the total wellbeing of students in some selected senior high and technical schools across the country.
He appealed for 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; so as to be able to further your education while making good environmental sanitation practice a priority.”
The Ekumfi District SHEP Coordinator, Mr. Richard Boatey, while addressing the students appealed for them to consider personal hygiene as the starting point of being environmental sanitation ambassadors.
He said as Ghana has chalked up remarkable success in the supply of good and potable water at over 73 percent, it has done terribly with only 13 percent at the sanitation level in trying to achieve the Sustainable Development Goals in the WASH sector.
Another Communications expert at Zoomlion, Mr. 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 cultivate the habit of dropping solid waste into the waste-bins.
Mr. Abirigo assured the school that Zoomlion will continue to support their sanitation needs and train more responsible adults like Mr. 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 is seriously lagging behind, as total access to sanitation is only at 13%.
She stated: “Children lose 272 million schooldays 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 illnesses promote low school attendance and stunt growth as a result of malnutrition and poor academic performance, which is a worry to the GES.
She further said: “Effective behaviour-change programmes such as Zoomlion’s are critical to the success and sustainability of all water, sanitation and hygiene interventions”.
She urged schools to practice hand-washing 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 by Zoomlion Ghana Limited to the Edinaman Senior High School for the use of staff and students.
