Communities urged to imbibe the spirit of maintenance

Mr Stephen Saator Gbul, the Presiding Member (PM) of the Wa West District Assembly, has urged community members to take responsibility for maintaining facilities in the community to derive the maximum benefit.

He said facilities such as boreholes, health and educational infrastructure at the community level could not last for a long period if community members failed to maintain them.

Mr Gbul, who said this in an interview with the Ghana News Agency at Wechiau, urged community members to imbibe the culture of maintenance to prolong the lifespan of facilities.

“In some communities there are boreholes but the maintenance culture is poor because of that many of them had broken down. You will go and see some communities that have about four boreholes but only one is functioning.

“You don’t expect government or an NGO to give you a facility and come back to maintain them all the time,” Mr Gbul, who is also the Assembly Member of Dornye Electoral Area, explained.

He, however, explained that in cases where maintaining those facilities were beyond the capacity of the community, then the District Assembly or Member of Parliament could come in to support.

The PM expressed worry that some communities run to or attack their Assembly Members for not repairing their boreholes and said it was not the duty of Assembly Members to repair boreholes.

Mr Gbul also blamed some contractors for delivering poor services to the vulnerable communities, leaving the facilities not to stand the test of time.

On access to healthcare services in his electoral area, the Presiding Member said some people in the area were reluctant in seeking healthcare services due to the distance between their communities and the health facilities and the poor state of the roads.

He said some pregnant women in the area had to sometimes deliver at home or on the way to a health facility due to the lack of health facilities in the communities.

Meanwhile, according to the Ghana Health Service protocol, every pregnant woman is required to deliver at a health facility as part of measures to reduce maternal and neonatal mortality.

The protocol is also geared towards achieving target 3.1 of the UN Sustainable Development Goals, which seeks to “reduce the global maternal mortality ratio to less than 70 per 100,000 live births” by 2030.