A data collection training aimed at equipping the various municipalities within the Greater Accra Region with skills on data gathering on sanitation has ended.
The programme is to help identify challenges within the sanitation space and offer the requisite solutions. 
The three-day skills training, which was conducted by African Environmental Sanitation (AFES) Consult and Consultants in collaboration with the Environmental Service Providers Association (ESPA), ended on Saturday, October 8, 2022.
Speaking to the media last Friday during a monitoring and supervision of the Data Audit and Validation Exercise (DAVE) at the Accra Technical Training Centre (ATTC), Ayawaso Central where 100 people were being trained, the District Lead for Ayawaso Central Municipality, Benoni Acquah, stressed the need for more data to be collected on sanitation.
“The whole exercise is about data collection, and we are collecting data on sanitation in Ayawaso Central Municipality,” he said.
He explained that the data that would be gathered would help identify challenges of sanitation and find ways of addressing them.
“We have registered organisations that collect data and some are already in the system and within the municipalities,” he added.
According to him, the whole monitoring and supervision operation was to find out which ones were active and were doing their work and those that were not.
Mr. Acquah indicated that after the training programme, the main field work (that is collection of data) will commence on October 12, 2022, and end October 28, 2022. 
On Saturday, October 8, there was a pre-test exercise where trained field officers were deployed on the field.
“And we’ll see if there will be any challenges and if there are no challenges, then on the 12th of October, we will get to the field and begin to collect the data,” he assured.
The data, he further added, will be used in decision-making, especially with the loads of sanitation challenges in Accra.
“I think it is in the right direction to collect data, identify the challenges so the right policies would be made to resolve it,” he underscored.
From Ayawaso Central, the team moved to La Dadekotopong where 124 persons were undergoing training at the St. Thomas Aquinas Senior High School centre.
According to the District Lead, Nathaniel Addo, the data that will be gathered will give sanitation management companies the opportunity to know happenings in the sector.
He, therefore, entreated residents within the municipality to refrain from littering about, adding that “it is a bad practice.”
Other centres visited included Accra Girls Senior High School in the Ayawaso East where 64 persons were taken through data collection skills.
At the last centre at Osu Presby SHS in the Korle-Klottey Municipal District, the team observed that 80 people were undergoing training.
According to the District Lead, Adelaide Naa Adorley, curbing sanitation issues within the municipality was very challenging.
She attributed this to the fact that many of the residents did not have waste bins.
In all about 4,400 officers will be trained in all the 29 municipal and metropolitan assemblies within the Greater Accra Region.
