Liberia to shut down schools without washing facilities

Liberia has announced that it will shut down schools and other businesses that lack water, sanitation and hygiene facilities.

The country’s Public Works Minister, Gyude Moore, said this on Wednesday at the launch of the Water, Sanitation and Hygiene in Schools (WASH), held at the Charles D. B. King Public School in Monrovia.

Moore said the decision was taken after it was observed that schools and food centres in Liberia do lack sanitary facilities, a factor that could lead to illnesses among the populace.

The minister noted that many schools, especially those far from the main roads, do not have any hygiene facility at all.

He said the ministry will work with WASH partners to provide the necessary facilities for schools lacking it.

Moore warned that the ministries of Education and Health will jointly enforce the WASH program

"In terms of extending WASH facilities, we are going to work with our partners at the Ministry of health and Education to be more aggressive in terms of our enforcement, similarly if you run a restaurant and the sanitary conditions are not good, we will shut down that restaurant, we cannot have schools where we send our children to get sick, so in instances where we find out that schools are not keeping up with the WASH conditions, it will be our position at the Ministry of Public Works to shut down that school until that WASH condition can be fixed," he said.

The WASH program was initiated by the Liberian government to increase access to safe water supply and sanitation and improve hygiene practices in country as part of its efforts to recover from the devastating effects of Ebola.

School in the country only just resumed in late February 2015, after almost 4000 deaths.