Akim Oda, June 12, GNA - The Eastern Regional Minister, Dr Francis Osafo-Mensah, has commended the Green Earth Organisation (GEO), an environmental and development non-governmental organization, for complementing government's efforts at protecting and conserving the country's natural resource.

The commendation was contained in an address read for him at a symposium organized by the GEO at Akim Oda on Saturday for about 300 students drawn from environmental clubs in the Eastern Region. Dr Osafo-Mensah said student environmentalists were needed to ensure that measures put in place by the government to address environmental problems made the desired impact.

He said considering the insight and experience gained from environmental programmes, the students could educate the people on environmental preservation.

Dr Osafo-Mensah commended the GEO for its continued involvement in environmental education, clean-up campaigns, tree planting exercises, wetland conservation among others throughout the country. The Eastern Regional Programme Officer of the Environmental Protection Agency(EPA), Mr Francis Nyagbenu called on Ghanaians to consider environmental protection as a shared responsibility.

He said marine pollution was a growing environmental concern in the country and that urbanization and industrialization were resulting in the contamination of lagoons with organic and chemical pollutants. Mr Kwesi Anderson, Deputy National Co-ordinator of the GEO, appealed to Ghanaians, especially the youth, to be interested in environmental protection programmes.

He said: "we can not allow the future generation to accuse us of doing little to check the steady deterioration of the environment."