[ 2017-03-28 ]

Most water bodies in the country are being polluted by illegal mining activities

Manso Adubia streams left with chemicals and no fish after ‘galamsey’
The Manso Adubia constituency in the Ashanti
Region has seen the illegal mining activities over
the past few years leave the area in the alarming
position of having no natural water body fit for
human use.

The Member of Parliament for Manso Adubia, Yaw
Frimpong Addo, had ominous words for the rest of
the country as he warned that “no water body
will survive this threat” of illegal mining if
it is not tackled. Speaking to Citi News’
Richard Sky, Mr. Addo recounted growing up in the
constituency and being able to drink from the
streams in the area which have now been polluted
by illegal mining activities.

“All the streams that flow into the two major
rivers in the constituency; the Offin River and
the Oda River, are gold bearing streams and
because of that, their valleys are also full of
gold,” the MP explained.

Chemical pollution of water bodies is one of the
expected by-products of the illegal mining
activities, which have forced a number of water
treatment plants nationwide to shut down.

Mr. Addo reminded that the chemicals used to
extract gold and are poisonous thus, “any river
you see there or pool of water you see there; no
fish can survive in it. Aquatic life is gone
completely because of the chemical inflow into
such streams.” Community swapping cocoa farms
for galamsey pits.

The effects of illegal mining in the Manso Adubia
extend to cocoa farming. In the last four years,
the country’s cocoa production is has gone from
835,000 in 2013, 897,000 tonnes in 2014, 740,000
tonnes in 2015 and the increased to 840,000 tonnes
in 2016.

The MP noted that cocoa production has indeed been
dwindling since 2010 and in Parliament, he has
maintained that the ailing cocoa production is not
down to just weather patterns. “It is not only
the fact that we don’t have good weather and all
that. Large tracts of our cocoa farms have been
removed in search of gold through galamsey
activities but nobody took what I said
seriously.”

“So what is happening is, all the lands in water
logged areas, where they dig alluvial gold, are
gone. They have decimated the land in such a way
that nothing is left there… so they have moved
from that level to attack the mainlands.”

“During the campaign, I observed something that
made me so sad; large tracts of cocoa lands that I
knew not too long ago had been destroyed in such a
manner I can imagine that land can never be
brought back.” Fighting illegal mining is a
complex issue and Mr. Addo lamented that these
complexities have been compounded by the fact land
owners willing sell land off their lands with no
regard for the consequences.

Era of excavators escalated epidemic Illegal
mining has always existed in Manso Adubia,
according to Mr. Addo and the youth who were not
too keen on farming had always gravitated towards
it. It’s only when heavy machinery wound its way
into illegal mining that the situation as a
ticking time-bomb started to wind down faster and
spark the destructive nature of the small-scale
gold mining in the area.

Source - citifmonline.com

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