Galamsey Fight: Stalled Or Flip-Flop; Selective Or Under Review?

A Galamsey site

Whoever thinks galamsey as a national conversation will go away anytime soon will be living in a fool’s paradise. We all as a nation sowed to the wind, and are reaping the whirlwind in decline in foods security figures. Indeed, it is similarly showing in cocoa production volumes and arable and grazing lands.

Ominously, we are feeling the pinch in water production in very staggering terms – with water production costs shooting up dramatically and tariffs hitting the roof in a nation where poverty levels are rising and real income levels diminishing as a result of inflation.

Intriguingly, waterbodies are turning mud and murky, with natural aquaculture resources not only threatened but shrunken terribly in organic tilapia, crabs and shrimps as well as mudfish and several sources of fresh water protein.

From the Pra and Ankobrah to Chemu in Accra and Chemu in Tema, through Sakumono and Sango to tributaries of the Volta Lake in communities in Ketu, Climate Change is combining with human activities in impunity to desecrate the ecology and strangulate our natural resources and potential wealth running into billions of dollars.

Exposed

Twice, we have been exposed as a negligent nation in our poor management of our natural resources. We polluted our waterbodies and allowed them to flow into neighbouring countries and we allowed that madness and impunity to infect our cocoa sector, with our cocoa farms yielding tainted cocoa that risked blacklisting in the international market.

As for the diminishing of our forest cover waterbodies and arable lands, the facts are that we may have lost a quarter of what used to be in the last 20 years alone. Yet, we have institutions under our respective administrations which are supposed to be protecting these resources at national, regional and district levels. Effectiveness and efficiency in delivery and monitoring is the reason why we have these institutions represented on the ground in district assemblies.

That’s why we desk for Sanitation, Environment, Trade, Tourism, Agriculture, Security, Revenue etc. Whether these local government agencies had been performing is a matter for debate. Little wonder, it has largely been seen since Kwame Nkrumah as a chop-chop state institution where workers come sign their names and work lotto or vanish to go do private work.

Or they are like some of our Ministry of Defence departments where people go and write their names and fool around, instead of dutifully carrying out their schedules, though they enjoy the benefit of closing three hours earlier than the rest of the Ministries – Finance, Trade and Industry, Foreign Affairs, Communications, Roads and Highways.

Bottom line. We all sat down and watched ugly monsters, some of them teenagers and adolescents, bastardise our national heritage for profit. Ten years and still counting, we continue to look on, hoping to wake up one morning to see the waters cleanse themselves and resources replenished without us doing anything, except talking and blame-gaming.

That’s the typical African mentality. See no evil. Speak no evil. Hear no evil. Just join the band of ugly noisemakers and madding crowd and wait till next elections to recycle vagabonds and greedy bastards into office and pay them hefty sums, with some of them laughing all the way to the bank, without a record of competence and efficiency.

Galamsey fight situation report

Am surprised that our newspapers and online portals don’t have running columns on the environment. The Ghanaian Observer used to have that, with The Chronicle also, I recall, doing a weekly feature on adolescent reproductive health, with so many youth fooling around and some of them pining away their lives in shafts underground, in search of gold dust – and at the peril of their lives.

But I also recall that earlier in his appointment, the youthful Minister for Lands and Natural Resources, Samuel Abu Jinapor, initially struck remarkable relations with the media. It appeared to me that it was a partnership that was receiving sympathy. Reports about reclamation efforts were helping his cause and advocacy until, somewhere along the way, public opinion conspired with intrigues from the naysayer community to crash out the quality and robustness of civil conversation needed to tackle the scourge and national emergency in a bipartisan and inclusive state-sponsored national dialogue.

Tonic?

To see in one of the online media a report that work is ongoing in arresting suspects in mining areas and who delude themselves into believing this whole crusade is a one-day wonder, gives me some hope. What can anybody do in life, without hope? That is what the Bible means when it says a living dog is better than a dead lion.

Not to have hope is like a fly following a dead body in a coffin into a grave. Having hope is initiating a solution, despite challenges and it trying and trying till victory is accomplished. Now, according to the report that I saw and read, four persons have been arrested in an exercise by the Twifo Atti Mokwa District Assembly in the Central Region in collaboration with its police command and the National Disaster Management Organisation (NADMO) to clamp down on illegal mining activities on the River Pra at Twifo Praso last Tuesday.

The team, led by the police and the District Chief Executive, Robert Agyemang Nyantakyi, burnt five changfan machines, five boats and seized other mining equipment being used by illegal miners on the river Pra.

This was in response to the devastating effects of their activities on the river Pra and the environment. Last week, a two-and-a-half-year-old twins, a boy and a girl, tragically lost their lives after falling into an abandoned galamsey pit full of water.

Report details

The report explains that the incident occurred at Mokwa, a farming community near Twifo Praso. The incident, according to residents, was one of several in recent years caused by uncovered galamsey pits in the district.

The impact of the illegal mining activities on the river had also negatively affected the activities of the Ghana Water Company Limited (GWCL) in the Central Region.

The GWCL, in a statement to the media, said the pollution of the Pra River, especially at the catchment area at the water intake points, was at its barest minimum. It added that about 60 per cent of the catchment capacity was silted as a result of illegal mining activities, compromising water quality.

“We are currently recording an average turbidity of 14,000 NTU instead of 2000 NTU designed for adequate treatment,” that is a staggering 700 per cent degradation level from the last calibration. It also means, in terms of costs, that the financial burden on the community or Pra water production cycle has increased seven-fold. But that’s what these monsters and hyenas are sinking their teeth into our collective flesh as Mother Ghana.

The report said the GWCL plant at Sekyere Hemang was producing only 1.650 million gallons of water a day which was a quarter of its installed capacity, causing severe inconvenience to customers around Cape Coast, Elmina and other surrounding communities. That also means deficits and losses to government and the taxpayer as well as the total citizenry in a nation not committed to a tax compliance culture.

Yet, we have even flagbearers dodging revenue enhancement programme conversation, though they need everybody on board to be tax compliant so that the NHIS and the SHS, among several other social protection programmes, would succeed and help improve quality of life among vulnerable segments of the population.

Impact

The newly built bridge, which is yet to be commissioned, is already being impacted negatively by the activities of illegal miners who are now mining close to the base of the bridge. Mr Agyemang said while the assembly was committed to the fight, it was constrained by inadequate logistics.

He lamented absence of adequate numbers in boats, adding that stationary and trained divers as well as logistics, including life jackets, were needed if the fight against the menace was to make any meaningful impact on the activities of the galamsayers.

He also called for logistical support to sustain the fight and the support of residents in the communities to support their effort. In a nation of complainers, instead of innovators, it would not be surprising if the Twifo Atti Morkwa District NADMO Coordinator, Richmond Addai Marfo, added his voice in making calls or adding to the lamentation and stating that the fight had become challenging considering that the illegal miners operated a 24-hour economy, like bandits do.

Similarly, not surprising when he says the level of devastation and the impact on the environment and the health of residents were so enormous that only a collective fight is sustainable.

That is why HE, MONTECRISTO and all other Ghanaians need to get on board in killing this monster called GALAMSEY.

Source:inquirernewsroom.com