Monrovia – Bobby Whitfield, the Executive Director of the Wash Sanitation and Hygiene (WASH) Commission, has disclosed plans of his institution to carry out rigorous inspection exercises at various schools in three counties to ensure the full compliance with sanitation and hygiene.
The WASH Commission is the head of the WASH pillar under the Incident Management System (IMS) in the fight against COVID-19.
In February, the WASH Commission introduced what they termed as “Clean Hands Preventing the Virus” campaign to enlighten citizens to practice proper sanitation and hygiene.
Since then, the WASH Commission, with the help of development partners has been able to distribute handwashing facilities including several disinfectants to several public institutions.
Speaking at the WASH Commission Head office in Sinkor Wednesday, Executive Director Whitfield said all schools in Montserrado, Margibi, and Bong Counties will be forced to comply with health protocols to ensure that students remain COVID-19 free.
According to the WASH Commission Boss, through the Catholic Relief Service (CRS), they were able to secure US$18,000 to carry on the inspection in the three respective counties.
“The CRS came in and say how can we support the work of the WASH’s pillar to be more effective and efficient to meet the need of the people,” Whitfield said.
“The Money secured from the CRS will go toward conducting what we called rapid schools assessment to ensure that our schools comply with the WASH Commission’s protocols.”
The Ministry of Education couple with the Ministry of Health months back launched the “Safe School” protocol. The WASH Commission Boss says his institution is responsible to ensure that every stakeholder complies with such protocol.
“As head of the WASH Commission, we will be visiting Montserrado, Margibi, and Bong Counties. These counties will experience the first rapid school assessment. And we will be making sure that all schools in these three counties are in full compliance with our WASH guidelines,” WASH Boss said.
According to him, the exercise will be completed in three weeks. Whitfield also called on other development partners to help the WASH Commission to extend the rapid school assessment exercise to the entire 15 counties.