Ekiti State government has view to reinforce it one functional Toilet per household inorder to improve sanitation and curb the menace of open defecation .
Government also reminded the residents that the Executive order stating that no one should practice open defecation is still in place and that it has become illegal for anyone to get involved in the act.
It therefore gave a three months ultimatum for the residents to comply or be ready to face the law.
The recent mapping survey conducted by Water Sanitation and Hygiene (WASH) revealed that 1.4 million practice open defecation in Ekiti, second in ranking in Nigeria and South-West.
“Every household must have a toilet. If people built their houses and considered it worthy to build a kitchen, I believe that they must consider it expedient to build a toilet.”
“The European Union have equally financed the construction of model public toilets in 14 small towns in Ekiti West and Gbonyin Local Government Areas of Ekiti State under its water supply and sanitation sector reform programme 111,a project called farewell to open defecation.”
The first sanitation mobile court for 2016 was carried out by the joint team of the Task Force and Mobile Court operations. “Men of the Environmental Health Officers lay ambush as early as 5:30 a.m to apprehend some environmental laws defaulters.”
No fewer than 24 persons were prosecuted for various offences bothering on poor hygiene and open defecation.
They were arraigned in the mobile court and sentenced to between one and three months in prison or ordered to pay a fine ranging between N3, 000 and N5, 000.
Speaking on this year’s World Toilet Day, with the theme, ” Accelerating Change”the Director, Environmental Health and Sanitation Department, Ekiti State Ministry of Environment, Mr Tunde Balogun said the department have started assessing the public toilets which are not functioning properly so as to recomend to government on how to fix them.
Balogun confirmed that many landlords have been prosecuted at different occasions for failure to provide toilets adding that government had issued another three months ultimatum with which landlords of any house without toilet would be prosecuted.
Balogun said:”The Government’s concern for the people is for everybody to live in a hygienic environment. Every household should have at least 1 functioning toilet; that is the mind of the government, and that is what the government wants.
“The houses without a toilet, that is where the Environmental Health officers, both state and Local Government comes in, and from time to time they have been moving around to sensitise people that it is a matter of necessity they must have a toilet in their various homes, and they have been given a few period of time to make sure that they apply the sanitary toilet in their environment.
“We give them 3 months, and for houses that did not comply, we will charge them to Court. So that is the sanction, because any house without toilet we give them notice, we have been charging them to Court on a routine bases.
“We have some public toilet made by government across the State some are by the interventions maybe from World Bank and then other Establishments; I can not state precisely the number of public toilets we have some are functional some are not functional.
“Our plan now is to get the number of toilets functioning and recommend to the government so that those not functioning will definitely be worked on.
Recall that Ekiti had launched a number of programmes aimed at ending the menace .For example, under immediate past administration of Dr Kayode Fayemi, the state launched ” Ekiti ko Egbin Sile ” to accelerate the process of open defecation free in Ekiti State to change the narrative of being ranked second among the States engaging in the menace in Nigeria.