Four arrested for open defaecation
The Adjabeng District Magistrates’ Court in Accra has asked four persons who were arrested last Tuesday for openly defaecating into the Odorna open drain to sign a bond to be of good behaviour.
Advertisement
Although they were found not guilty of the offence, the court, presided over by Justice Isaac Addo, asked that they sign the bond so they would not repeat such actions.
The four were arrested behind the Vodafone head office at Kwame Nkrumah Circle in a swoop by a task force of the Accra Metropolitan Assembly (AMA) that was out to enforce rules on sanitation in the city.
Public Health Act
They were charged with defaecating in an unauthorised place contrary to the Public Health Act 851 (56) of 2012.
The Act states that, “A person who within the area of authority of a district assembly or any other public place or space causes or permits to be placed a carrion, filth, dirt, refuse or rubbish, or any other offensive or otherwise unwholesome matter, on a street, yard, an enclosure, or open space except at the places set apart by the local authority or the environmental health officer for that purpose commits an offence and is liable on summary conviction to a fine of not more than 250 penalty units, or to a term of imprisonment of not more than three years or to both.”
The Prosecutor in the case, Mr Jacob Nii Okine Aryee, said the action of the culprits was likely to trigger the spread of diseases such as typhoid, diarrhoea, dysentery and cholera.
Reason for defaecating
The culprits, however, told the court that their decision to defaecate openly was because of the high fees charged at the public toilet facility in the vicinity.
Kofi Micheal, one of those arrested, told the Daily Graphic that on the day he was arrested, he had diarrhoea and could not afford to pay the GH¢1 required from him to use the public toilet.
“Before I was arrested, I had diarrhoea and had run out of money after visiting the toilet three times previously. So I decided to defaecate into the drain and while doing it I was arrested,” he said.
For Patrick Yankees, he had taken the decision to not visit the toilet facility because effluent from the toilet was emptied into the open drain.
“Ever since I came to live in the area many years ago, I have never seen a sewage tanker come to empty the toilet’s sceptic tank. Faecal matter from the toilet is all poured into the drain so I do not see why I should visit the toilet,” he said.
He said besides the charge of GH¢1 which was high, managers of the facility charged extra GH¢2 for the use of the bathhouse.
“I am not working and as such cannot afford that amount of money every day. That is why I bath in the open and use the drain anytime the need arises,” he added.
Review prices
Justice Addo has, therefore, urged the AMA to review the fees charged at its public user facilities to make them affordable so that residents would not use unapproved places as places of convenience.
‘We will continue to work’
In an interview with the Daily Graphic regarding the arrest, the Director of Public Health of the AMA, Dr Simpson Boateng, said the exercise was not intended only to arrest but to also educate the public to keep the environment clean.
He said about 10 people had been prosecuted since the beginning of the year for committing sanitation offences. Some of them, he said, had been sentenced to serve three months in jail.
He denied reports that the taskforce that carried out the swoop in question were scared of arresting residents and as such abandoned the mission.
“We are not scared of anyone and that is why we were able to arrest four people who we caught flouting the law on sanitation,” he said.
Dr Boateng said the taskforce would continue to work hard to change the mindset of people with regard to sanitation in order to rid the country of filth.