By Fatima Anafu-Astanga
Bolgatanga (UER) June 06, GNA – Media personnel have been sensitised on the integrated Water Resource Management project currently ongoing within the White Volta Basin catchment communities in Bolgatanga, in the Upper East Region, to enable them to enhance their public education.
The project interventions currently being implemented in two Sub Basins within the White Volta Basin are aimed at empowering communities in water governance.
The training was held by the Blue Deal Water Project under the Dutch Water Authorities in collaboration with the Water Resources Commission.
Mr Aaron Aduna, the Coordinator of the Blue Deal Project, said the media played a significant role in bridging the gap through its increasing engagements with their communities, to improve stakeholder communication on interventions to achieve better results.
He said the media could not be left out in the project, hence engaging them would help improve understanding particularly on terminologies and jargons that were related to watershed management.
Ms Joan Atulley, the Assistant Coordinator of the Blue Deal Project, in a presentation said reaching out to communities within the catchment areas for them to appreciate the interventions rolled was key, saying a single institution could not do, hence the media involvement.
She said many activities were ongoing in two activated Sub Basins and was necessary for her outfit to bring the media along to understand the interventions, enabling them to tailor programmes to engage the beneficiary communities, increase communication to improve public understanding on how water could be sustainably used.
Ms Atulley said increasing water usage both positively and negatively, its demand, availability and quality of the resource had implications on the growing population and required improvement in water governance structures.
“Land use has significant impact on water quality stemming from flooding, pollution, abuse of buffer zones due to farming and Sanitation challenges,” she stressed.
Later in a media interview she said, the Blue Deal is a Dutch Water Authority that had mobilised funds to implement interventions in the Upper and Lower Volta Basins in Ghana, with an aim to empower people in governance.
The interventions were basically on capacity building, water governance and community sensitisation on the two sub-Basins, namely the Gambaga and the Kpasenkpe Sub Basins respectively within the White Volta Basin.
She said with the Kpasenkpe Sub basin, a committee had been instituted with interventions such as reforestation activities already underway in the Vea Dam Catchment, spearheaded by Tree Aid, with funding support facilitated by Blue Deal, while a sanitation intervention was also being developed at the Gowrie Senior High Technical School, where grey water from the institution entered into the dam causing its pollution.
To this end, the students were supported to construct a water treatment system using nature-based solutions, technically hatched by the students to prevent grey water pollution which the treated water can be used for other purposes.
The Assistant Coordinator said a model had been developed where a traditional authority known as “Environmental Chiefs” in the Bongo district in charge of water governance and the Blue Deal intended to work through them when they were inaugurated, for continuous community sensitisation and other aspects of work even after the Blue Deal intervention had ended.
GNA