Water resource management is shared responsibility – Commission
Mr Solomon Danso-Ankamah, the Principal Basin Officer, Tano Basin Secretariat, Water Resources Commission (WRC), Sunyani has called on the citizens to effectively manage Ghana’s water resource to ensure the availability of clean and abundant water.
He said having clean water could only be possible if everyone got on board and contributed towards cautious water resource management.
Mr Danso-Ankamah made the call in an interview with the Ghana News Agency in Sunyani, and advised citizens to adopt prudent water management mechanisms that would enable the country to attain sustainable water resources.
He said the menace of waste management was also becoming a problem and that improper waste management could also affect groundwater saying, ”in Sunyani there is no landfill site, what we have is a dumping site which is not properly engineered to avoid groundwater pollution.”
Mr Danso-Ankamah stated that wastewater from gutters and unplanned landfill sites found their ways into the water bodies because they were connected to tributaries, hence water providers like Ghana Water Company Limited (GWCL) were compelled to use more chemicals to treat the water to become portable to distribute for household use.
“The challenges faced by these companies were due to attitudes by people in the communities, because ideally GWCL is supposed to treat clean water for use, but they end up treating turbid water and the more turbid the water, the more chemicals required to get the water wholesome for use, thus increasing the cost of production,” he bemoaned.
He appealed to citizens to be circumspect in the use of water resources, saying managing water was not a one-time event but a process which was not solely the responsibility of mandated state entities, but the responsibility of everyone.
Source: GNA