The Honourable Eastern Regional Minister, Mr. Seth Kwame Acheampong has urged stakeholders in water safety and security to work hard to prudently protect underground water from over-exploitation and contamination to save lives. This, he said has become urgent given the fact that most of the water bodies in the country were being polluted through human activities such as galamsey, farming among others, adding that, billions of people and countless schools, businesses, healthcare centres, farms, and factories were being held back because their human rights to water and sanitation were yet to be fulfilled.
Hon. Acheampong made the call at the Eastern Regional World Water Day celebration held at the Bukunor Water Treatment site in the Yilo Krobo Municipality.
Speaking on the theme for this year’s celebration, “Accelerating Change” He noted that the dysfunction throughout the water cycle undermines progress on all major global issues such as health, hunger, gender equity, job creation, education, industrialization, disaster prevention, and peaceful and sustainable development.
Hon. Acheampong appealed to engineers in the sector to explore all available solutions to protect underground water through the use of relevant information and appropriate technology, stressing the importance of groundwater as a hidden resource with an enormous impact on restoring life.
He consequently invited all the stakeholders to continue to collaborate with the government that is working, on average, four times faster, to meet Sustainable Development Goal Six (SDG6), which seeks to ensure safe drinking water and sanitation for all by focusing on the sustainable management of water resources, wastewater, ecosystems and acknowledging the importance of an enabling environment by 2030.
The Regional Manager of Ghana Water Company Limited, Ing. Asomani Nyarko also lamented the effect of human activities such as illegal or irresponsible mining, sand winning, and unscrupulous farming methods on the production and distribution of safe potable water.
He said the pollution of water bodies contributes to the high cost of treating raw water into potable water which is finally passed on to the consumers.
Other stakeholder institutions such as the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), Water Resources Commission, Community Water and Sanitation Agency, and Public Utilities Regulations Commission added their voice about the need to protect water bodies to ensure water safety and security.
World Water Day is celebrated on the 22nd of March each year, set aside by the United Nations (UN) to raise awareness and inspire action to tackle water and sanitation crises. It is about taking action to tackle the global water crisis of 2.2 billion people living without access to safe and potable water.