Pollution, A Friend Or Enemy To Our Socio-Economic Growth And Development

Pollution according to Oxford English dictionary: is the presence in or introduction into the environment of a substance which has harmful or poisonous effects. There are about seven main types of pollution according to recent research into the area of this topic. These namely are: Water pollution, soil pollution, air pollution, radioactive pollution, noise pollution and light pollution.

However, these pollutions mentioned are not all that we experienced in our part of the world; therefore,the most common ones in Ghana for that matter are water pollution,soil pollution,and air pollution.

In time past in our country’s history, we use to have very clean and safe water bodies, soil and atmospheric air for inhabitation for human kind and living creatures. Perhaps fast moving forward in about three decades in our country’s history, all those safe and clean water bodies, soil and atmospheric air have been polluted in one way or other.

For me to borrow the words of the supreme leader of Tibet in his autobiography book, he says “where there is unbalance in nature human kind suffers”. This, which is a clear demonstration of what is happening currently in our country Ghana, we have shown so much disrespect towards nature and our environments, and thinking that we can run away from our actions as human kind.

To begin with these topical areas of pollution as we identified in relations to our locality, water, soil and air pollution:

Water pollution
One can easily point to countless rivers and streams which have been pollutedby activities ofhuman beings or companies in and around the water bodies, that are been created by nature for habitations of human kind and living creatures.

There is a very exciting source of livelihood in our part of the world, commonly called illicit mining( Galamsey), this term has not yet discovered its real definition in our law books, or even in the public court of opinions, where final judgments are sometimes issued to our way of solving our challenges as a nation. But for me to also go by my own opinion of definition for now, I may be tempted to say “it is the destruction of the forest cover for that matter, the environments and polluting of the water bodies through the improper conduction of man activities, such as extraction of rich minerals metals from the soil to make livelihood, without recourse to the adverse effects that it’s bringing back s to us”.

Perhaps, I can say for a fact, this menace is one of the greatest challenges to all governments in the present and the past two decades of our constitutional rule in our governance as a nation. And it has received a lot of political policy approaches in the various regimes. Others decide to approachit with modesty and others believe it should be treated with all the urgency as necessary as it’s deserved as a challenge. However, the import is to stop the menace from destroying our environments.

Interesting enough, the illicit mining (galamsey) as it is noted for, has the tendency to contributeto the occurrence in all the three locally identified pollutions in our country. For instant, the removal of the vegetation cover and digging deep down the earth in search for those rich minerals don’t even end there,after they get those samples (be it rocks or soil).

Another stage of course is processing, where the require water to wash their milled rocks powder or soil from the field from the excavated fields. Withal these actions, they setup their washers “Chamffans” inside the surrounding water bodies (ie rivers or streams) these water bodies from which we get drinking waters and total polluted. This pollution is done, through the combined works of silt and chemicals they wash into the water bodiesresulting in the change in color of those rivers and streams, as well as increasing pals of silting of the water courses, this in end up causing the dryingup of the water bodies depriving no life for the aquatic creatures inside.

Soil pollution:
Mercury is one of the chemicals normal uses to extract gold during the mining processes in the industry. Due to the poisonous nature of this chemical, both the handling and exposure of this compound to water, soiland even human skin is critical to one’s health. In high accumulations in the human body as well as food chain, may adverse results and many other repercussions.

Due to the weak supervisory attached to Illicit mining in Ghana, most of this chemicals used cannot be checked as in where? What quantity? And which people are known to using it properly or not properly all over the country?

Institutionssuch as Minerals commission (MC) and the environmental protection agency (EPA) responsible for policing of the activities of these activities are sleeping on their jobs to carry out responsibilities. Therefore, government needs to do comprehensive, chemicals forensic test across all illicitmining sites across the country and those water bodies to determine the level of harmful or poisonous chemicals in the soils, water bodies as well as the food chain line.

Air pollution
The air we inhale is gradually is been polluted by the actions of human beings activities. Research has shown by the Paris Accord2015, which china is the single largest (40%) producer of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere due to its industrial activities, followed by USA(20%) and many others. Because of this, every country depending on its level of contributions industrialization and other factors is part of air pollution. For our case in Ghana, we are battling this carbon dioxide increasing level through a very inefficient vehicles smokes in our traffic jumps and improper burning of electronic waste at ‘konkonba’ market by scrap dealers and worn out vehicles tries being burnt into the atmosphere as well pollutions from gold mining companies ‘roasting’ their ounces .

However, since we are not yet there as one of the countries with many industries in industrialization, the mining companies in obausi,tarkwa have being polluting our atmospheric, since the ages of mining furnace processing into ounces. This is one of the stages of gold processing, I believe in my opinion that Environmental protection Agency (EPA) must insist on strict compliance.

Since it is obvious and well known to all us that, the bigger mining companies in obuasi,tarkwa and many other communities, make use of mercury in their extraction process, during the time of this ‘roasting’the mercury is burnt into the atmospheric air in those communities and the smoke causes a lot of harm to inhabitants.

This practices resulting in air pollution from this mercury and other harmful chemicals. Some of the symptoms of burnt mercury effects on people, who live and stay around thosemining communities, where this pollution is high, are: skin diseases, low intellectual levels of inhabitants, respiratory diseases etc.

So therefore, considering the hydra risk nature of pollution and the level of dimensions that pollution can have on ourenvironment and nature as a whole,it also comes with some positive results to our socio- economic lives of the people through ‘roasting’ of gold and the scrap dealership burning of electronic waste as means of survival by the youth.

This can be attributed illegal livelihood, but it creates source of employments for people in those communities. Ghana’s unemployment figures are not known statistical, but it is believed to be equally high like any other country in the world. So therefore, the youth carry out this as means of survival and to provide for their families and themselves.

Though, the income and revenue that is coming from those communities and its environs from the illicit gold activities, local authorities’ generatedrevenues through municipal, and districtassemblies’agents, to mobilize for developments and also creates a good standard of living for the inhabitants.

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