Infested Wounds, Bleeding Scars And New Sores: The Tragedy Of An Old Body.

When I write about galamsey, it is like playing a broken record or washing, rinsing and repeating the bane of the people who bear the brunt of galamssey and the looming danger hanging threateningly by a loose thread in the future which just a mile away or even in the present. From talking about my childhood days around Senensua to the Galamsey Manifesto and the in-betweens it seems we have shelved the spotlight on the menace of galamsey, and moved on as if it is in the past, but the past is not where it lays, it is a part of the future.

There is no doubt that the government is doing what it can do to avert the situation, we have seen and heard the security forces raid and raze to the ground the “ECOWAS Galamsey village”, the water guards, and others. But let us ask ourselves, “is it the responsibility of the government alone?” I have always maintained that the galamsey fight should not be left in the hands of any political party or government but should be fought as a threat to our very existence by Ghanaians without recourse to politics, because political actors do not have the political will to end the menace because of political funding.

At the chime of a new government, I personally decided to put on hold everything about galamsey and observe what the new administration will do to curb the menace. Through my observation these are some of the things I have seen, the galamsey menace is still ongoing maybe this time stronger, there are new sites conjuring out of places that were once green and ready for farming. When you put the Obuasi to Dunkwa-On-Offin stretch in focus you will realise that there are new galamsey sites growing vicariously on the stretch, again, what greets anyone entering Dunkwa from that stretch is galamseyers who are busily harvesting goodies from the bosom of the Offin River, on the same stretch there is another site at Suhyenso behind the Methodist church (if I have not mistaken the church). Okyerekrom and Kokotenten in the Adansi Akrofuom District continues to suffer from galamsey activities because the old galamsey sites are actively active and new ones are energetically reeling in, Chiaboso in the Adansi Asokwa District also had a galamsey site recently which is close to the Akwanserem police barrier (I say recently because when I used the road on 19/05/25 the site was not there, but I saw the workers on site when I reused the road on 23/05/25). We were here in this country, when galamseyers blocked a river and started mining in its basin, when political actors seized a forest reserve to mine illegally because their government is in power and somehow their MP was advocating for them (his party boys) to be allowed to mine in forest reserves.

My worry has also been the kind of jeopardy we are subjecting the not so far away future to and the utter silence of our traditional leaders (the custodians of our lands which are being assaulted) and the citizens (who are always sacrificed for the sake of someone’s greed), almost every day we see trailers carting Chan Fan and excavators through our communities to galamsey sites to destroy the environment which will lead to water pollution, loss of biodiversity, food shortage (if not contaminated foods), health risks like babies born with deformity, terminal illnesses, environmental degradation and a plethora of issues that visits in the wake of galamsey activities. If your dog does not bark when thieves invade your house, then it is either the dog is an accomplice or knows some of the thieves, whichever way the dog is a suspect. What I mean to say is that if we don’t fight this galamsey menace our posterity will conclude that we all gained from this canker, and it would be a dirt on our whitewashed gravestone. Beloved, galamsey is not the answer to the unemployment situation in the country, our political leaders should find a better way of solving the issue other allowing galamsey to persist. What we need now is a state of emergency on small scale mining (both legal illegal) to streamline things, what we need now is a citizenry that voices out the ills of this canker slowly eating away their communities, what we need now is you and me clamouring together fighting for our common good a galamsey free future devoid of politics, where we hold our leaders accountable, what we need now is us asking our leaders to create jobs that will take the youth away from galamsey site, what we need is not silencing our voices on galamsey issues.

The old galamsey sites are actively active, the abandoned ones are swallowing us in broad day light, and there are new ones finding spots on the same old land where they compete with farmlands for a place, and we silently watch on as our lands is pushed out her home by those whose interest in our land is their pockets, while they hold a raised placard with the inscription “let the boys eat”.

Koffi Adu Flair Demigod
28/05/2025