Water resources, works and housing minister, Kwaku Agyemang Mensah has called for pragmatic efforts to safeguard the environment warning water production will be at risk if it is not done.

Briefing Parliament on steps being taken by government to deal with the acute water shortage in some parts of the country, he said medium to long term measures have been taken to permanently address the crisis.

Over the last few weeks, parts of the Eastern, Central and Western regions have suffered acute water shortage.

They have had to resort to drinking or using polluted water for their daily activities.

The severity of the situation has however decreased in the Eastern region after government provided water tankers.

Dr. Mensah said issues of climate change and human activities must be checked to deal with water crisis.

“This valuable resource is at risk of depletion if measures ae not taken to arrest the growing rate of reduction caused by natural and human factors, including degradation due to farming along river banks, climate change, seasonal variability, increasing population growth and industrialization.

“The ministry in collaboration with other stakeholders is adopting measures to address the situation. Some of these include enforcing compliance of regulations, implementation of the buffer zone policy, implementation of the water use regulation LI 1692 should be a wakeup call for all of us.

“We should start to put in pragmatic efforts to safeguard our environment and thereby protect ourselves from the negative effects of climate change,” he said.

However, some Members of Parliament badly hit by the water crisis want the Water Resources Minister to be proactive in dealing with the issue.

MP for Nsawam Adoagyiri, Frank Annor Dompreh said “it is important we treat this as a national crisis. The matter is not limited to Effutu neither is it limited to Nsawam Adoagyiri. We want a certain national approach to deal with this matter once and for all.”

The MP for Effutu, Alexander Afenyo Markin called for measures to be put in place to control the activities galamsey.

"If galamsey is allowed to continue, the effect of it which is the release of toxic chemicals could be poisoning the water resources and even boreholes getting infected. So even if the minister is able to drill thousands of boreholes and same get infected, the people will not get water.”