Why Is The Current Crop Of Ghanaians So Hard-Hearted?

Environmentalists keep warning us that 'water conflicts' are a potential threat to the future peace development of many regions in the world. This is because global warming is continuing its relentless assault on our Planet. The floods in Mozambique and Malawi, which provided terrible TV pictures this past week, have exposed the lack of realism that afflicts those who doubt that global warming is taking place.

Precautionary measures such as desalination of sea water are being taken in some countries, by leaders blessed with foresight, to ensure that their populations can survive in future if their current sources of water dry up.

But what would those countries that are experiencing 'water stress' because of where Nature has placed them, say if they were told that there are some countries in the world where Nature has been kind enough to endow the inhabitants with rich water sources, but that the populations of these fortunate countries are  deliberately destroying   the water resources , in pursuit of such minerals as alluvial gold?

I make no apologies in drawing attention once again to the fact that in the town where I was born, Asiakwa (in the Eastern Region) the river Supong, a once-mighty River that used to give us cool, clean and extremely refreshing water to drink, has been turned into a series of stinking, yellowed mini-ponds, filled with mud, algae and weeds. And also weed-covered pits that recently claimed the life of a 24-year-old man, who merely wanted to fetch water from the River to have his bath! For galamsey operators have littered the riverbank with pits that have become death-traps.

At Asiakwa, the saddest aspect of the execution of the River Supong is that I am convinced it was done with the connivance of some of the inhabitants of the town itself. How could these people have been so hard-hearted? Poverty exists everywhere, but people do not destroy their own rivers because they are poor, do they?

I would like to point out that it is not only in my hometown that  galamsey  has corrupted the inhabitants. The illegal gold-digging is so widespread that the government, laudably, set up a 'Task Force' to end the menace. The Task Force, however, appears to have been set up for propaganda purposes. It was meant to fool the populace into believing that the government was  concerned  about the destruction that galamsey was causing to our rivers and water-tables. Why do I say that? I say so because no less a person than President John Mahama himself undermined the efforts of his own Task Force by stating at Kyebi - whose source of water, the once-mighty Birem River has been ravaged by  galamsey  operators - that he deplored the 'brutal force' used by the Task Force in seeking to stop galamsey !

Those engaged in the practice, the President claimed, were 'only doing it to earn a living.' Is it any wonder then that the Task Force seems now to have quietly faded away?

MPs are not asking any questions about it. The media are not making it their subject of discussions.

Yet film footage recently shot by Edem Srem (clips of which can be found at:   )  shows that many of Ghana's biggest rivers continue to be relentlessly 'hunted to death' by the  galamsey  operators.

Edem Srem's film is not the only graphic account of the destruction being wrought by galamsey in Ghana: another film-maker, Afua Hirsch (formerly of the London  Guardian  newspaper) has also made a heart-breaking film that can be found at:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ohrrE1rjzLo

And the investigative journalist, Anas Aremeyaw Anas has also propduced this clip: 

I humbly urge the Environmental Protection Agency to put in place an emergency programme that will seek to resurrect all the Rivers that have been ravaged by galamsey operations.

The Environmental Protection Agency should collaborate with the Ministry of Land and Mineral Resources, as well as the Water Resources Authority, on a project aimed at 'River Resuscitation' which they can all, acting together, present to the government.

The government can take such a programme to aid-donors and ask them for finance. The World Bank, in particular, will lend an ear to any plea to fund such a programme, because it has experience of how the interests of those engaged in extractive industries often conflict with the interests of rural communities whose very existence they sometimes threaten. There are other organisations dedicated to ensuring the survival of rural communities whose voices are callously ignored by the powerful people at the centre of government who work to feather their own nests.

The Chinese government, too, will, I believe, be willing to help Ghana reclaim some of the Rivers that Chinese gold-diggers, in collaboration with Ghanaians, have ravaged in our countryside. China has a population of over one billion. And no government can be responsible for the actions of such a huge number of people. Therefore, even if the Chinese government has strict rules about how the Chinese people should conduct themselves overseas, some Chinese criminals would inevitably slip through the net.

The Chinese door, I am sure, is open to us to ask for assistance to repair the damage done by galamsey operators. We only have to push it and use the correct diplomatic language, and it would open and usher our two countries into renewed friendship. Our government should please knock. It will be told to enter. I have the strongest belief that the Chinese government has nothing but the warmest friendship towards the people of Ghana. But your friend cannot help you if you hide your problems from him! True friendship thrives in an atmosphere of mutual trust and confidence that what hurts the one friend must not be ignored by the other. Feeling must not be hurt by a candid examination of any harm that one friend might be inflicting on the other, without  intending  to do so.

By Cameron Duodu