The Co-Principal Investigator of a joint Galamsey Research Team of the University of York (Canada) and the University of Ghana has called on the state and stakeholders to show true commitment to fighting the menace of illegal mining.
Speaking on Saturday, September 10, 2022, edition of Joynewsfile monitored by GhanaWeb, Professor Gladys Nyarko Ansah revealed some startling findings of the team’s research.
According to her, the effect of galamsey on some communities has become dire to the extent that aside from resorting to bagged water for domestic use, they also have to use the same for their farming activities.
“What we say we want to do, let us mean it. The people who live in the galamsey areas are not happy with the situation. | have visited a number of places where galamsey occurs. It is very sad, farmers have to buy pure water to go and mix chemicals, weedicides, and things to spray their farms,” she said.
Prof. Nyarko disclosed that such a situation is peculiar to the Atiwa West area where farmers buy bagged water for their farming activities. She added that the devastating effect of galamsey has made farming unattractive to the youth of the area.
“Atiwa West, that is where we worked. They have to buy pure water not just to drink but so they can mix agrochemicals to spray their farms; pesticides and so on and so forth. So then farming becomes unattractive and in a country where you have a large number of young people who are unemployed and they can’t even see farming as an alternative, they just jump on the galamsey bandwagon and it becomes difficult to control anybody and anything,” she said.
She therefore called for a committed fight against illegal mining activities that goes beyond rhetoric.
“So let us mean what we say. If we don’t mean to do them, let’s keep quiet about it, and let’s stop spending so much money. But if we really mean to do it, then let us do it the way we know we ought to do it,” the researcher said.
The discussion on the impact of illegal mining is in the wake of the arrest of a notorious galamsey kingpin who has been arrested in Ghana after being deported from the country in 2018.
The arrest of Aisha Huang has ignited talks about illegal mining and its detrimental effects on the country’s natural resources such as forest and water reserves.
