The Managing Director of the Ghana Water Company Limited (GWCL) Ing. Dr. Clifford Braimah has said government’s fight against galamsey has achieved little results thus far in stopping the continuous pollution of the country’s water resources.
Government last year launched the Operation Vanguard taskforce to lead the fight against the menace in the Ashanti, Eastern and Western regions in a bid to restore the country’s polluted water bodies and destroyed forestry reserve.
It has also banned small scale mining leading to the loss of some $551million collectively by the registered small scale miners. The figure, the Ghana National Association of Small Scale Miners (GNASSM) warned is bound to go up if measures are not made to lift the ban.
The government has since been brandishing the move as effective.
But speaking to Starr News, Dr. Braimah said the efforts so far has not yielded any significant results noting that the quantity of chemicals used to treat polluted water remains the same.
“As somebody who’s looking at it I look at the numbers. I just don’t look at what people say on air,” he told Starr News’ Daniel Nii Lartey.
“…Before the galamsey we were using three bags of Aluminium sulphate in a particular treatment plant in Bonsra in the Western region a day. [But] because of the galamsey it shot up to 12 bags that is four times what we were using.
“When the Operation Vanguard came in it came down to five. [But] as at yesterday, Thursday March 22, we are now doing ten bags, so it tells you that it is going up again,” he added.
When asked by Nii Lartey was that to say there has not been any significant improvement, Dr. Braimah snapped “of course,” adding “that’s why I said that the missing link between nature and water is the attitude of the people and so if you want to resolve the issues and we don’t resolve the attitudes no matter the intervention you put you might not get it right.”
“And that’s exactly what’s happening,” he stressed.
Source: Ghana/Starrfmonline.com/103.5FM
