We make a national call today. And this is a call to action by all Ghanaians to stop the wanton destruction of the environment by people who think that is the only way to earn a livelihood. Unfortunately, for this group of people, unemployment and the desire to fend for themselves and families have pushed them to turn to illegal mining, otherwise called galamsey.
Another worry is that so far, successive governments have failed in every conceivable strategy to break the back of these galamseyers. The operations launched by the governments described variously as “Operation Halt” and “Operation Vanguard” among other names received high expectations by the people but they have achieved very little results. Notwithstanding the challenges, the government is still determined to deal with the menace of galamsey.
These campaigns against galamsey received a big boost in April 2017, when a group of media practitioners came under the banner of the “Media Coalition Against Galamsey” to expose the negative effects of illegal mining in order to galvanise the people into action. The launch which was hailed as very opportune involved not only media people but religious leaders who pledged to use the pulpit to preach against illegal mining.
The fight against galamsey is not to kick against mining, but opposed to the negative effects on the environment. It is interesting to recall that few months after the launch of the coalition, the quality of rivers such as Birim, Pra, Tano, Ankobra and Offin had improved considerably as the Ghana Water Company Limited was on record as saying the turbidity level was on track to be normal. But this excitement was short lived because the galamseyers were not deterred by the actions of the security agencies to flush them out.
While the government battled these illegal miners that included foreigners from the sub-region and mostly from China, a section of the society including the opposition NDC poured “sand into the gari” of the operations, thereby emboldening the nation wreckers to intensify their activities.
Once upon a time and to be precise during the 2020 elections, the NDC went to mining areas in the Western Region promising the illegal miners the right to do business if they voted for the party to return to power.
This obviously dangerous canker, instead of receiving national support, has again divided us along partisan lines to the detriment of the people.