An official of the Water Resources Commission has appealed to the media to redirect their focus and give much to issues confronting the environment, especially river and water bodies.
She said the media should also challenge politicians and policy makers to come out with specific and feasible strategies that would help preserve and protect the environment and water bodies.
Miss Adwoa Painstil, Water Quality Specialist at the Water Resources Commission (WRC), said it was time for a paradigm shift in the media to promote integrated management of water resources to ensure efficient water use.
Miss Painstil said this at a day's seminar on understanding integrated water resources management for some media personnel, district information officers, district agricultural officers and chairmen of some water boards in some districts in the Ashanti Region on Wednesday.
The seminar, which was organized by the WRC, aimed at educating the participants to understand the concept of integrated water resources management to enable them to educate the public.
Miss Painstil said water was a finite and vulnerable resource which needed to be protected at all times and that as an economic good there was the need to develop economic instruments that would provide tools for demand management.
She called for the active involvement of women in decisions involving water management at the local levels since they are the majority users, especially for domestic activities.
Mrs Adwoa Mokuah Dako, Public Affairs Manager of WRC, expressed concern about the negative attitude of some people towards the environment and water bodies in particular and said such behaviour had contributed to the drying up and pollution of water bodies resulting in rampant water borne diseases in the country.
She called on the media to help shape public perception in order to change their attitude towards the environment.