The Tamale Metropolitan Assembly, TaMA, has secured funding support from its development partner, UNICEF to construct about 96 household latrines for individual LEAP beneficiaries in the metropolis. The beneficiaries constitute the pro-poor category whose selection was based on underlying factors other than the already profiled economic circumstances of the aged, persons with severe disability, extremely poor pregnant women and mothers with infants among others contained in the LEAP beneficiary data base.
You would recall that TaMA is one of five urban assemblies to benefit from the Government of Ghana/UNICEF funded urban community-led total sanitation of the urban sanitation project.
Ahead of the commencement of the actual construction works slated for March ,2021, community stakeholder engagement became imminent.
At separate meetings with key stakeholders drawn from across the beneficiary communities as well as implementing institutions and development partner, the project working group, made up of the PRO, Environmental Health and Sanitation Officer, Officer from Social welfare Department, Urban Sanitation Project supervisor and others, took turns to address participants on project details including project background , criteria for selection of beneficiaries, need and levels of community stakeholder involvement such as introduction of artisans for the project, project site selection, monitoring and reporting on progress of work through to completion etc.
It must be noted that the project communities, for purposes of this engagement exercise, were clustered for ease of engagement and to grant proximity advantage to target participants. More importantly, the strategy was deployed to prevent mass gathering in line with social gathering protocol in the fight against covid-19 pandemic. Changli,Dohinayili and Dabokpa communiites, for example, were in first cluster.
Participants were happy for a transparent process. They commended the assembly for creating such an all-inclusive engagement platform to carry them along in the development effort.
Attached are some event photographs.
