Mr Kofi Adda, the Minister of Sanitation and Water Resources, has asked Metropolitan, Municipal and District Assemblies (MMDAs) to submit their roadmap for eradicating open defecation to the Ministry by the end of January 2018.
He said it was important that this be done between now and 2020 so that the national target would be met.
Mr Adda explained that this would also enable the Ministry to monitor the plans and roadmap from the MMDAs.
The Minister said these in a speech which was delivered on his behalf by the Chief Director at the "What Do You Know" quiz competition for second cycle schools, in Accra, to mark the World Toilet Day celebration.
At the end of the quiz competition, Presec, Legon won with 15 points, Odorgonno Senior High School had 13 points, Presec Tema got 11 points and Ashaiman Senior High School also had six points.
The event on the theme: "Wastewater, Where Does Your Poo Go?” was to draw attention to the challenges of toilet or open defaecation.
The aim of this year's commemoration was to reach out to low income urban communities and mobilise a bigger mass to support the safe toilet campaign.
Mr Adda said under the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) Ghana's target for access to improved household toilets was 54 per cent by 2015, but Ghana achieved 15 per cent.
"Today we have even a more ambitious Sustainable Development Goals (SGD) target and it behoves on all of us to strive harder to achieve it as sanitation is a shared responsibility,” he said.
“The SDG target is more ambitious because this time round, the global target is 100 per cent by 2030."
The specific SDG target on sanitation promotes access to adequate and equitable sanitation and hygiene for all and end open defecation by paying attention to the needs of women and girls and those in vulnerable situation."
He said that was why the Government launched and was implementing the National Sanitation Campaign with a number of activities aimed at improving environmental cleanliness and improve general behaviour.
Mr Adda said the Environmental Sanitation challenges facing Ghana were fast becoming endemic and there was the need to decisively deal with them since they had socio-economic and public health implications on the development of the country.
He, therefore, urged all to continue to monitor the Government’s stated commitments and also the efforts at meeting them to transform the sanitation challenges.