Galamsey: A threat Ghana must abolish

Dear Mr. President,

Galamsey is Environmental Terrorism that could claim tens of thousands of innocent Ghanaian lives, yearly, from diseases caused by the impact of galamsey in the long term!
Ghana Must Abolish Galamsey, now!

Water is life, it is said. But it must be clean water, not contaminated water. Considering the monumental public health risk of the impact of galamsey on Ghanaians, the country must abolish galamsey by any means and at all cost. Galamsey must be done away with in all urgency if Ghana’s water bodies are to survive and play their natural roles to the country’s people, their nutrition, and the environment.

The impact of galamsey is a ticking time bomb waiting to explode on Ghana, and when it does, the cost and impact will be unbearably high to the country and the citizenry.

Galamsey, the illegal, unregulated, unstructured, unmonitored, uncontrolled, and unchecked small-scale mining principally of gold ore, involves the use of heavy metals such as mercury, among others, to extract gold from the dug-out ore. The chief worry in the use of mercury and other heavy metals is their inability to biodegrade. Thus, they are incapable of decomposing naturally by the action of bacteria and remain in their dangerous state even long after use during the galamsey process.

Since galamsey involves the use of water with mercury and other heavy metals to isolate the gold, the mercury-impregnated water is released into small waterways and eventually, the major rivers that flow downstream to the coastal belt and into the sea. Due to the pollution by galamsey, the colour of the water of the rivers has turned from clear, translucent to red; red rivers.

Being the main source of drinking water for human populations living downstream, these mercury-polluted rivers play a big role in the food chain. Water from contaminated rivers generally flows through communities that are downstream and usually rural. Drinking water in the communities is usually largely un-filtrated or untreated of chemicals. This mercury-contaminated water, if Ingested over a long period of time can accumulate in high quantities and can cause serious health problems that can be fatal.

Other Ghanaians who benefit from water from the Ghana Water Company Limited (GWCL) in the polluted rivers-affected areas may benefit from cleaner water, but at a supra-normal cost to the GWCL, as it costs a lot more and requires more chemicals to treat the mercury-contaminated river water in their water treatment facilities.

Prior to the prevalence of mercury poisoning in the rivers, GWCL did not incur such high costs to treat river water in the affected areas. However, over the years, this has increased exponentially as the presence of mercury in effluent water from galamsey activities discharged into the rivers has morphed.

Galamsey effects are evident in the dangers of ingesting untreated heavy-metal contaminated water and food prepared from it. The long-term human health consequences of consuming mercury over a long period of time include “insomnia, memory loss, neuromuscular conditions, headaches, cognitive and motor function disorder. Other long-term effects include nervous and digestive system breakdown, immune deterioration, cancer, and lung and kidney damage, all of which can be fatal” (World Health Organization, 2017).

Overall, therefore, poisoned river water arising from galamsey, potentially, impose major costs upon the national health system in terms of the budget for health care. It also is of significance simply because of the lives that could, potentially, be lost and the social effects on communities and the nation.

There is an urgent need for government to conduct research to ascertain and to acquire “adequate knowledge about the pollution status of all the water sources,” i.e., the rivers, in the affected areas to ensure that safe and hygienic potable water ends up in use by households (Khalid, et al, 2019).

Similar empirical research should be conducted among the people that drink and ingest water from these rivers to observe their current and future health issues. And, this should be done periodically over many years to observe their health patterns.

Critically, in the light of these concerns of the immediate and long-term consequences to the state, Government, as a matter of priority, should expeditiously abolish galamsey.

An open, urgent war must be waged against galamsey, and every resource mobilized in this war. The war against Galamsey must be viewed as a war against Environmental Terrorism since galamsey is much a threat to Ghana’s national security as any form of terrorism. Parliament should enact new legislation that would classify galamsey as terrorism and give legal assent to the war to abolish it as an environmental, public health, and national security threat.

Government should make it mandatory for all legal mining companies to treat the effluent water from their mining operations before discharging same into the environment and waterways.

The enacted legislation should sanction all licenced companies in small-scale, as well as large-scale mining, which violates or acts inimically to the governing laws on safe mining.

The Ghana Armed Forces should be deployed in more serious ways than it is now, in an open war against galamsey to truncate promptly, this public health menace. Units of the Ghana Armed Forces should be rotated with frequency to avoid collusion with Galamseyers that would undermine the war.

If nothing is done immediately to abolish galamsey, potentially, more Ghanaians could die from its health hazards than the number from the Boko Haram and Al-Qaeda terrorism in countries in Ghana’s neighbourhood.

Ghana should learn from Bangladesh’s lessons

The Government should also not wait for consequences as evidenced in Bangladesh, which has paid a heavy human and economic price for inaction by allowing its rivers and water bodies to be polluted with arsenic from many years of abuse by the textile industry waste and other pollution causes.

Arsenic, just like Mercury, is nonbiodegradable and toxic. From about 2010 onwards, arsenic pollution in Bangladesh’s rivers reached such high proportions that massive numbers of Bangladeshis died.

By 2016, “as many as 43,000 Bangladeshis died each year from illnesses associated with arsenic contamination of drinking water” (Jahan, 2016). In subsequent years, the proportion of deaths of Bangladeshis caused by arsenic poisoning increased to one in five (20% of all deaths). That country continues to suffer from the arsenic pollution menace to this today.

Ghana needs not wait to experience a similar epidemic. Potentially, deaths of 43,000 Ghanaians a year from water pollution by galamsey activities should be unacceptable.

I have hereby done my part as a citizen by adding my voice to the many and increasing numbers concerned about this issue. Mr. President, rise and do something as the First Citizen. As you have famously said, “Ghanaians should not be spectators.” We want to be warriors with you against the environmental terrorists that are brazenly destroying Ghana’s rivers, her beautiful environment, and killing Ghanaians silently and slowly with mercury.

Mr. President, I believe that you care about Ghanaians. Those of us, Ghanaians, alive today look up to you for urgent action against these Environmental Terrorists, now.

A healthy nation is a wealthy nation.

The time bomb continues to tick.

I thank you.

References:

Jahan, H. Jahan (2016)
Arsenic in Bangladesh: How to Protect 20 million from the World's Largest Poisoning.
(2016, 10 18)

Retrieved from The Guardian:

www.theguardian.com/global-development-professionals-
network/2016/oct/18/arsenic-contamination-poisoning-bangladesh-solutions Google Scholar

Khalid, H., Abrar, S., & Kudrat, U. Jim (2019)
Water pollution in Bangladesh and its impact on public health. ScienceDirect Volume 5, Issue 8, August 2019, e02145, p. 12.

World Health Organization, Mercury and Health: Key Facts, (2017) Retrieved from WHO Newsletter, 31 March 2017:
https://www.who.int/news-room/fact-sheets/detail/mercury-and-
health#:~:text=Mercury%20may%20have%20toxic%20effects,of%20major%20public %20health%20concern.