Ms Bernadette Adjei, a Principal Legal Officer of the Water Resources Commission, has identified poor waste management as one of the major threats to the country’s water bodies.
She said this at a workshop on “Development of Buffer Zone Legislative Instrument and Dissemination of Dam Safety Regulation”, organized by the Commission in Bolgatanga.
The forum, which attracted stakeholders including the District Coordinating Directors of the Assemblies, Senior staff from the Ministry of Food and Agriculture (MOFA), Community Water and Sanitation Agency (CWSA), the Ghana Water Company Limited and Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), was aimed at soliciting the inputs of the stakeholders for the passage of the Buffer Zone Policy into law and to also sensitize the stakeholders about the Dam Safety Regulation Law passed last year.
She said the improper discharge of faecal matter, waste from chemical shops, spilled oils from garages, sachet water empties, plastic waste and activities of illegal miners among others did not only account for the pollution of the country’s water bodies but threatened their survival.
She said although the country has performed creditably in the area of water supply under the Millennium Development Goal it has failed to meet the sanitation component of the goals.
Ms Adjei said the importance of buffer zones at ensuring the protection of the country’s water bodies such rivers, streams and dams could not be understated and it was against this background that the Commission was touring all the ten regions to seek the views of all stakeholders to help ensure that the Buffer Zone Policy was passed into law.
She said the passage of the Buffer Zone Policy would empower the mandated institutions to help in the creation of more buffer zones and protect the existing ones from being encroached upon.
Ms Adjei said apart from building the capacity of communities and stakeholders to create and manager buffer zones, the policy when passed into law would also help build the synergies of mandated institutions including the Water Resources Commission, MOFA, EPA, CWSA, and District Assemblies, to work efficiently to help improve upon the water bodies.
Dr Bob Alfa, the Head of Surface Water Resources at the Water Resources Commission, said the law would pave way for the proper formation of committees in buffer zone areas and empower them to help monitor and enforce laws to protect buffer zones.
He said the people would be educated to go into Farmer Managed Natural Regeneration and other good farming practices to protect the country’s water bodies as well as ensure that land use activities did not take place too close to water bodies.
The stakeholders apart from expressing concern about the refusal of many farmers to comply with the directive not to farm along the water bodies, also mentioned that the siltation of many dams was of great concern to them.
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