If Someone Says 'Vote For Me To Give You Poison To Drink!', What Do You Tell Him?

Of course, the suggestion cannot help but tell you that the person making it, thinks you are a bloody fool!

For if you were not a fool, you would know what poison does to people and other living things, wouldn't you?

YOU'D KNOW THAT – IT KILLS THEM!

Now, your life is the one thing no-one can replace for you if it is taken from you. Yet someone says to you 'give me your vote so that I can take your life from you!'

Do you need to be a doctor of philosophy to realise that the person making the suggestion has no respect for you whatsoever?

Was he there when your mother went through her painful labour to deliver you?

Yet he wants to kill you. By giving you poison. Stupid you! (he thinks)

To be precise, this politician says he will allow galamsey to go on. He will grant an amnesty to people jailed for galamsey,so that they can come out of jail to resume their ruthless poisoning of our rivers and water-bodies, in search of gold!

Is this an election pledge to be made to people one believes have common sense?

But maybe everyone is wrong and the politician making the pledge knows something we don't know?

Perhaps it is not true that galamsey poisons our rivers and water-bodies?

OK, let us listen to what the scientists, say:

QUOTE: “Case study of mercury and cyanide use in [small-scale mining]”

“Due the increasing price of gold, small scale artisanal mining interests have been expanding their activities around the world.... [This has resulted in] mining conflicts ...related to land use, discharges of high suspended solids into rivers, the use of mercury, and... the misuse of cyanide...

“In the process of amalgamating concentrates, miners use either pans (manual) or drums with black sugar, to clean the mercury surface. The amalgam typically contains 60% mercury and 40% gold, which is an example of the inefficiency of the squeezing process...

“All tailings with cyanide and mercury are disposed into the nearby streams. . .UNQUOTE

Now, let's be specific and come home to Ghana. A Report by Human Rights Watch, published in October 2014, repeat October 2014, (that is, a good six years ago, gave this account of galamsey:

QUOTE: “When I visited the small-scale — or “galamsey”—gold mines in the Ashanti Region, I met “Kwame,” a quiet but self-assured 12-year-old. He dropped out of primary school about a year ago to help his mother feed his five younger siblings... Kwame was spending his days carrying, crushing and washing ore.

“As he described his work to me, he put his hands in his trousers’ pocket and pulled out a small flask filled with a silvery liquid — mercury. He explained: “I use the hand to spread the mercury. Then I create the amalgam. I burn it on my own wherever I get fire, at my mother’s house or anywhere.”

“What Kwame did not know is that he was inhaling toxic mercury fumes when he burned the gold-mercury amalgam, risking brain damage and other irreversible harm to his health from mercury poisoning.

“Mercury attacks the central nervous system and causes serious, lifelong health conditions, including brain, kidney and heart malfunctions; in high doses, it can kill. And it is particularly harmful to children.....

“Ghana has an estimated one million small-scale gold miners, and they commonly use mercury to process gold. They mix the mercury with the ore to create a gold-mercury amalgam, and then burn the mercury off so the raw gold remains.

“These million miners include thousands of children who are exposed to the toxic effects of mercury during “galamsey” mining.

“My colleagues and I interviewed 24 children in Ghana who faced chronic exposure to mercury through mining work; the youngest was nine. These young children bear the brunt of mercury’s deadly impacts because their developing bodies make them particularly vulnerable.

“We also interviewed an 18-year-old pregnant girl who was working with mercury, unaware that the foetus was highly vulnerable to mercury exposure, and that the result could be a lifelong disability. And then, we spoke with a 19-year-old who had worked with mercury for two years and was already experiencing hand tremors, a classic sign of mercury poisoning.

“Mercury is freely available in shops and can be bought with a canister, bottle, or as a ball wrapped in a plastic cling film. Much of it has been brought in by Chinese miners....

“The problems stemming from mercury use don’t stop at exposure from inhalation. Once used for gold processing, mercury-contaminated water is often dumped on the ground, polluting Ghana’s rivers and lakes, and poisoning its fish and those who eat them. UNQUOTE

The Report points out that “In October 2014, the government of Ghana [NDC] “took an important step towards addressing the threat of mercury. Ghana signed a new international treaty designed to reduce mercury exposure globally, joining 102 countries that had signed.

“The treaty, the Minamata Convention on Mercury, was adopted on October 10, 2013, in Japan, near the fishing town that gave the treaty its name. In Minamata, half a century ago, at least 1,700 people died and many more suffered lifelong disability after eating fish contaminated with mercury when a factory polluted the ocean... .UNQUOTE

I ask you: can you guess the name of the politician who wants to ignore all this and grant an amnesty to galamsey offenders if he is elected on 7 December 2020?

Can you?