A section of the participants at the Conference
THE GENERAL Secretary of the General Agricultural Workers Union (GAWU) of the Trades Union Congress of Ghana (TUC-GH), Edward Kareweh, has warned that certain species of living organisms, including water bodies face extinction if stringent measures are not introduced to end illegal mining (galamsey) activities in the country.
“Galamsey is killing all our rivers, polluting our rivers, it is destroying our forest, and it is destroying any farmland that is on its way and these can be blamed at the doorsteps of our politicians,” he lamented.
Mr. Kareweh was addressing members of GAWU and some representatives of political parties during the Union’s 4th Quadrennial Women’s Conference and 1st National Youth Conference held in Kumasi, the Ashanti Regional capital recently.
The GAWU General Secretary noted that while other countries were creating forests and preserving certain species of living organisms so that they don’t disappear, Ghana is rather deliberately destroying its precious resources.
Mr. Kareweh also spoke about the adverse effect of climate change on agriculture, noting that the expected seasonal reductions in food prices have not materialised due to delayed or insufficient rainfall.
As we speak, though we are in the harvesting season for the southern sector, foodstuffs prices are still going up when they should have been coming down and the picture is not going to be different from few months to come when the northern sector will begin to harvest because we have not invested enough in our agriculture,” he explained.
He said the decision of the Union to bring the political parties was timely in the sense that most of them were to come out with their manifestos so they could incorporate some of the discussions into their manifestos yet to be released.
Out of the many political parties in the country that were invited, only the National Democratic Congress and Movement for Change honoured GAWU’s invitation.
Dr. Ahmed Yakubu Alhassan, former Deputy Minister for Food and Agriculture in the erstwhile John Dramani Mahama government, stated that there were sustained efforts that were being used by the NDC government to ensure that galamsey was arrested, using very comprehensive detailed programme before the NDC left power in 2017.
Dr. Yakubu Alhassan, who is part of the current manifesto drafting committee of the NDC disclosed that there is a special committee within the manifesto drafting committee that is solely attending to galamsey issues to deal with it should the NDC win power in 2025.
On his part, Nana Ohene Ntow, Senior Advisor to the flagbearer of the Movement for Change, Alan Kyerematen, admitted that galamsey activities have destroyed good farm lands, water bodies to the extent that water from some rivers cannot be used to water crops because they are poisonous and polluted.
He disclosed that his party promises to deal with galamsey activities within two years if voted into power in the upcoming elections in December.
FROM David Afum, Kumasi