Ghana: Public Accounts Committee recommendations on toilet facilities in public schools (2026)

Why this report

The Parliament of Ghana repository lists two Public Accounts Committee reports dated mid-2026. One covers the Bank of Ghana statement of foreign exchange receipts and payments for 2024, dated June 2026 ³. The other, on school toilets, is the subject of this record. It was chosen as its recommendations, findings and ministry replies are all in the published text ^1,2.

What the audit found

The audit covered the Environmental Health and Sanitation Department of the Ministry of Sanitation and Water Resources, the School Health Education Programme (SHEP) Unit of the Ghana Education Service, and selected schools in the Accra, Kumasi and Tamale Metropolitan Assemblies ¹.

In Kumasi in 2022, 133,114 toilets were required and 7,318 were available, a deficit of 125,796 or 94.5%, according to the report ¹. In a sample of 63 schools, 13% met the required standard and 25% had no toilets ¹. The report records that maintenance plans were absent in all schools visited ¹.

The recommendations as numbered in the report

The committee's conclusion sets out ten recommendations numbered i to x. Recommendations iii and vi are paraphrased here. The others are quoted ¹.

• i. "The Ministry of Education, GES and MMDAs should implement a time-bound plan to eliminate the toilet deficit in public schools" ¹
• ii. "All new school infrastructure should include adequate toilet facilities and reliable water supply" ¹
• iii. The Ministry of Education, GES and other bodies should secure a sustainable water supply for all school toilet facilities ¹
• iv. "Completed sanitation projects should promptly be handed over to beneficiary schools" ¹
• v. "GES should enforce regular cleaning, maintenance and timely repair of school toilet facilities" ¹
• vi. Government should provide adequate and timely funding for sanitation infrastructure and maintenance ¹
• vii. "GES should provide dedicated budgetary support for the maintenance of sanitation facilities" ¹
• viii. "The Ministry of Education should adequately resource SHEP Coordinators to effectively monitor sanitation in schools" ¹
• ix. "The Ministry of Education, GES and MMDAs should strengthen sanitation education, supervision and protection of school toilet facilities" ¹
• x. "The Ministry of Education should periodically report to the Committee on the implementation of these recommendations." ¹

Government response

The report records the replies of the Ministry of Education and GES at the hearing. Management said it "acknowledges the finding of the Auditor-General regarding inadequacy of toilet facilities in public schools" ¹. On locked toilets it said "the challenge was not the failure of the toilet facilities themselves but the absence of reliable water supply" ¹.

On unfinished handovers, management said "the school toilets may look complete but are not fully done until the contractor completes the remediation" ¹. The Deputy Minister said pupils "should not be made to clean the sanitary facilities in the schools", citing the risk of bacteria (quoted from the report) ¹.

The committee asked the House to adopt the report "together with the recommendations contained herein" ¹. The repository entry gives no date of laying or adoption ².

Outcome status

Recommendation x asks the Ministry of Education to report back to the committee periodically ¹. No such report, and no record of adoption by the House, was found as of 22 October 2026. All ten recommendations are recorded here as Pending.

Civil society has raised follow-up before. The Ghana Integrity Initiative urged the committee to do more to check whether audit recommendations had been carried out, as reported by Laudia Sawer of the Ghana News Agency on 18 August 2023 ⁴.