Koforidua, March 20, GNA - The Ghana Water Company (GWC) on Friday informed the Eastern Regional Security Council (REGSEC) of its intention to shut down treatment plants at Kibi and Bunso if the activities of illegal miners in the Akyem area were not halted. The action, according to the GWC, has become necessary since the illegal miners are operating close to the banks of the Birim River, which is the raw water source for four different water treatment plants in the region.

The Company said as a result of those illegal operations, the river is heavily polluted to the extent that water treatment for those areas attracted three times the cost.

Mr Moses Painstil, Regional Director of Water Quality Assurance, who informed the REGSEC at a meeting with chiefs from the Akyem areas, indicated that the miners operate very deep and wide pits and that effluent from the washed pits get to the intake points where dams had been constructed for abstraction and subsequent treatment. The four water treatment plants are at Kibi, which has the capacity of producing 30,000 gallons per day and serves the town and it environs. The Bunso one has a 100,000 gallons capacity per day and provides water to Bunso township, cocoa college, parts of Osiem and Nsutam. The Anyinam treatment plant also has a capacity of 30,000 gallons per day and serves Anyinam and its township whiles the Osino plant of 30,000 gallons capacity serves Osino and its environs. He said the Birim River had deteriorated in its aesthetic quality such that the rather clear water has now become brownish red in appearance and heavily silted, adding that available raw water data indicated that the colour of the water was in excess of 6,000 hazen units at Kibi, 2,000 hazen units at Bunso and 600 hazen units at Anyinam.

According to Mr Painstil, the mineral bearing rocks at Kibi and its environs contain fluoride in high content and therefore treated water quality results show significant levels of fluoride far above the acceptable limit and that if not checked the populace, with time, would suffer from fluorosis, which is a serious dental condition. He revealed that sometimes when the company was forced to treat the water despite the situation, the final product did not conform to drinking water standards of the World Health Organization (WHO) and so the company was forced to pump the treated water to waste incurring liabilities such as energy, chemical and manpower cost. Mr Painstil therefore appealed to the REGSEC and chiefs to find a solution to the activities of the galamsey operators who had even threatened to divert the river course for their convenience. Barima Kwame Koh II, Chief of Asaman-Tamfoe and head of the Akyem Abuakwa illegal miner's task force, said the galamsey activities had assumed a high rate that cocoa farming was under threat in the Akyem area, since people were cutting their cocoa trees to make way for illegal mining.

He revealed that in some cases, school children abandoned school to work as labourers at the sites of the galamsey operations and confirmed that from their monitoring, the water colour of the Birim River had changed to brownish red and dangerous for human consumption. Mr Samuel Ofosu-Ampofo, Eastern Regional Minister, called for concerted efforts from the chiefs to tackle the issue. He said REGSEC's attempt to fight the illegal operations had been faced with logistical constraints and other challenges and called for support from the chiefs to tackle the problem. Mr Ofosu-Ampofo assured the GWC that government would do whatever it takes to ensure that the situation was brought under control so that the people would have good drinking water.