Daniel Akill-Attieh's Blog | 406: Revised 25/Dec/08 4.45am GMT+2 FAECES ON BEACHES AND IN DITCHES III – The Right to Shit! You may dodge but you cannot dodge forever. Sooner or later you will step on not a few

Dear Readers and Fellow-Apes; 2008 was a Murky and Hapless Year! Let us hope that 2009 does not turn out to be even More Murky and Hapless!

I intentionally did not wish you a Merry Christmas, because Christmas is another story for another Posting at another time; and I do not wish you a Happy New Year, since I believe that ONLY FOOLS ARE, OR CAN BE, HAPPY ALL YEAR ROUND. I do, however, wish all of you A GOOD YEAR! With a little Good in one's life, one can be a little happy, which is all one can ask for in one's short sweet dream one calls a life-time. BY GOD AND SATAN!

A Jack of many trades and master of all; I am honest to the core and I hate lies, deceits, pretensions, hypocrisy, treachery, betrayal, and stoic compliance; and I despise – and actually pity – Human-Apes who follow-the-herd-or-pack

I expose and reveal the lies, deceits, pretensions, hypocrisy, treachery, betrayal, and blind, deaf, and stoic compliance, and Human-Apes who follow-the-herd-or-pack; I tell or write the truth; and I say what I mean and mean what I say

I fear nothing; least of all, death

If I must fear anything at all in life, then let me fear what I think and know of myself; because, in the end, one’s knowledge and opinion of oneself is what counts most. All the world may think and believe one is such and such, but one knows one is such and such. Also, I like to look in the mirror and like what I see and know about me.

I invite comments, remarks, criticisms, and even insults – so long as they are straight to the point, in order for me to correct or adjust myself accordingly. What I do not welcome and won’t accept or tolerate is HORSE-SHIT!

Dear readers and felow-Apes; with every page, every report or article, every paragraph, every sentence, every word, and every letter; I thank you for taking the trouble and the time to read My Not-So-Humble Comments.

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406: Revised 25/Dec/08 4.45am GMT+2 FAECES ON BEACHES AND IN DITCHES III – The Right to Shit! You may dodge but you cannot dodge forever. Sooner or later you will step on not a few

14 October, 2008

Revised 25/Dec/08 4.45am GMT+2 FAECES ON BEACHES AND IN DITCHES III – The Right to Shit! You may dodge but you cannot dodge forever. Sooner or later you will step on not a few

Dodging faeces on the beaches

Gleaned from: IRIN-News / Plus-News Tuesday 16^th September 2008

Dear readers and fellow-Apes; I was born in Ghana, so I chose to sweep and clean up my own back-yard before I complain about my neighbour’s. Also, make no mistake; what I have written about Ghana – my mother-land – is only half at best and a quarter at worst of her African neighbours!

ACCRA, Ghana: In the hot airy afternoon at Jamestown beach, once considered to be one of Accra's most famous beaches, four young friends squatted in the open air while in conversation. They were defecating in full view on the beach, and they were not alone. Off in the distance, one could spot many more residents dropping their pants, squatting, and freeing their bowels......Shortly after the four friends leave, ocean waves wash away their waste.

With 4 million people without access to toilets and 4.5 million with no sewage facilities, the World Health Organization (WHO) and UN children's fund (UNICEF) recently ranked Ghana the fourth most unsanitary country in Africa among a total of 52 judged, and the second dirtiest out of the 15 top-dirtiest West African countries.

The two organisations monitor African countries' sanitation services – Daniel: They do monitor all right! But not with the intention of doing anything, let alone good, but only to ask for more and more funds, of which, only a trickling will be spent on whatever. Read: 28 / 29 / 289

This ranking has rallied local environmental organisations to clamour for more radical governmental action on Ghana's deteriorating sanitation record. For the local Coalition of NGOs in Water and Sanitation CONIWAS, the ranking should serve as a reality check for authorities who act as if all is well – Daniel: All is well for CONIWAS and all will be more well for CONIWAS but not at all well for all if a lot more funds are poured into the bottomless coffers

The report states: Ghana has a national sanitation crisis and calls on the government to declare a national emergency – Daniel: A national Emergency Fund-Raising Appeal

Desperate measures

Walking along the beach, one has to pick one's steps very carefully to avoid stepping in faeces. One of the young men actually told IRIN that the beach was where they had always come to relieve themselves since their childhood and that they couldn’t stop. In any case, even if they wanted to stop, there was no alternative – nowhere else to go.

With no toilet facilities, people turn to bushes, drains, fields, and railroad-tracks – Daniel: I hope you’ve read 404 and 405 – and even outlawed pan-latrines to relieve themselves. The pan-latrine is a portable toilet made up of a bucket around which a wooden-frame or seat with a hole in the middle is fitted. When the bucket is full, users pay somebody – a Kru-Da-Bor – to dump it in a waste centre. Eventually the waste is pumped out to sea.

Ghana's Supreme Court banned the use of pan-latrines in July 2008 stating that they violated people's dignity and ordered city authorities to arrest and to prosecute users – Daniel: Poor Ghanaians. Not allowed to shit anywhere and nowhere to shit! I ask you! By banning Ghanaians from using pan-latrines, Ghana’s Supreme Court is depriving Ghanaians of the right to shit, carpenters of the right to make the wooden-frames, and Kru-Da-Bors of the right to empty the buckets into their large buckets and carry and take away the faeces and urine, Etc; in other words, the right to shit for most and the right to make a living for not a few! No Freedom and/or the Right to Shit or Make a Living, and no Justice; only Just-This for Ghanaians! Shame on the Supreme Court!
The court also ordered the government to build public toilets across the capital and to subsidize the construction of toilets in private homes – Daniel: What? Pay now and shit later; or shit now and pay later? measures that have yet to be implemented, according to CONIWAS – Daniel: True. And measures that shall remain yet to be implemented so long as CONIWAS and the UN, UNICEF, and all the other Con-Syndicates steal the funds and cleverly cover their tracks: 200 / 204 / 206 / 207
Health and economic toll

About a kilometre away from Jamestown beach, women selling food at Makola market in central Accra are surrounded by heaps of refuse. An unbearable stench pervades the air as green fluid seeps from the refuse onto the road. According to the Environmental Health and Sanitation Directorate and the Ministry of Health, Ghana can manage only 30% of its daily waste. Such conditions lead to up to eight deaths an hour.

The ministry reports more than 400,000 out-patient cases of sanitation-related diseases every year, including malaria, TB, diarrhoea, typhoid, cholera and hepatitis which lead to about 65,000 deaths – Daniel: Out-patients are those that are diagnosed and treated, and sent away with appointments for their next visits; which means that the in-patients or resident-patients are not included and are probably as many as the others.

The Director-General of Ghana's Health Services told IRIN that costs have mounted and have become unbearable to the nation. The country's health facilities are being overwhelmed by sanitation related diseases.

According to the acting executive director of the Ghana Tourist Board, dirty streets and beaches can repulse tourists who come to Ghana and are not used to faeces on beaches and in ditches. It is repulsive and has the potential to drive them away, and the time to act is now.

Tourism provides 25,000 jobs in Ghana, and contributes more than US$1 billion to the annual economy, representing 5% of the annual Gross Domestic Product (GDP).
Some in the government dispute the figures, saying the problem has been overstated and that although Ghana has a sanitation problem, it is certainly better off than most of her African neighbours. That statement was made by the second in command at the Ministry for Local Government responsible for monitoring sanitation facilities. Daniel: What an obtuse-ostrich-way of looking at it! Sanitary conditions in Ghana don’t have to be good, only very slightly better off than her neighbours! BY GOD AND SATAN!

Despite this assessment, and according to CONIWAS – Daniel: Con-I-Was and Con-I-Shall-Always-be; or better still: Once-a-Con-Always-a-Con – the government has drafted the country's first national sanitation policy, to be approved by late 2008 – Daniel: Let us hope it’s not too late.

Public Defecation a Crime:

The national sanitation ministry also plans to crack down on offenders. Working with the justice ministry, government officials plan to employ sanitation watch-dogs to punish people who defecate in public spaces and places; who litter, and who do not maintain sanitary conditions at home by fining or arresting them. Working in all 138 metropolitan, municipal and districts assemblies across the country they will send out a clear message: you unload here; you pay a fine – Daniel: We unload there; you pay a fine. That’s heads you lose; tails I win. What the cotton-picking and mother-fucking Insanity In-Sanitation Moron Ministry either doesn’t know or won’t tell is: Dogs shit, too! – My humble apologies to dogs; I had a dog once, when I was very young – so who the fuck in Horse-shit is going to watch the watch-dogs? Does that mean the watch-dogs can go anywhere and enter any home or premises on the premise of checking on sanitary conditions? That is In-sanitary-Insanity – to put it as mildly as possible! That smells of Saucy-Arabia and its Religious CPVPV: the Commission for the Promotion of Vice and the Prevention of Virtue – Read: 113 / 126 / 128 / 130 / 132 / 133 / 134 / 139 / 140 / 141

An Accra-based teacher told IRIN that that was putting the cart before the horse; there were no public litter-bins anywhere in the capital. They had failed, miserably; and they were just trying to prove that they were doing something about a really bad situation and covering their asses – Daniel: That wasn’t putting the cart before the horse! That was putting the horse on the cart and rolling it down-hill!

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