The Volta River Authority (VRA) held its safety day celebration last Friday to discuss issues to safeguard the environment.

The programme was on the theme, “Ensuring environmental sustainability, a key requirement of our Braise strategy.”

Addressing workers, the Director of Human resource of the VRA, Mrs Irene Stella Agyenim-Boateng, said ensuring environmental sustainability and safety were among VRA’s top most priorities.

She called on Ghanaians to be environmental-friendly and desist from acts that would cause further land degradation and destroy the vegetative cover.

Mrs Agyenim-Boateng said safety must be made a way of life personally and corporate-wide, adding that VRA would continue to create the right and conducive working environment for its workers “because safety is a core part of our operations”.

She said VRA’s operations were such that without safety, activities undertaken would not be successful.

Mrs Agyenim-Boateng commended the staff for their commitment to work, and urged them to continue to remain safe and resilient as they contribute their quota towards ensuring a safer environment.

In his presentation, Mr Daniel Benefoh, a representative of the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), said the country’s energy sector was responsible for 36 per cent of the national Green House Gas (GHG) emissions, adding that Ghana was among the top five emitters in West Africa.

He, therefore, reiterated the need for the public to become more environmentally conscious, saying the increased temperature in the country and increasingly uncertain rainfall patterns were a cause for worry.

“We must take action now to avert any catastrophe. Climate change is not something we should joke with. Everybody has a role to play to make safe the environment and make it safe for survival,” he added.

Mr Benefoh further revealed that EPA and VRA had developed measures to reduce the impact of climate change on its operations.

Touching on VRA’s community projects, he said VRA had established a framework to support the development of communities impacted by its operations.