Small-scale miners don’t pollute water, only illegal miners do – Francis Opoku
Mr Francis Opoku, Director of Finance of the Ghana National Association of Small Scale Miners has come to the defence of his group insisting that in their line of duty the water bodies are not polluted.
Unlike the illegal miners who target minerals in the rivers and end up destroying them in their bid to get the minerals, he said that for them clean water is needed to wash the minerals hence they do not end up polluting the water bodies.
He revealed during an interview on TV3 that due to the nature of illegal mining which requires some skills in swimming so they end up contracting people from especially neighbouring Togo and Benin.
“These galamseyers are mostly from Benin, Togo, they have the expertise to swim,” he stated.
“A lot of these people are not Ghanaians in the first place,” Francis Opoku.
Meanwhile, the legislator for the Tamale North Constituency Alhassan Suhuyini has also questioned the commitment of President Akufo-Addo in the fight against illegal mining.
For him, it is more words and less action from the government in curbing this practice that would gradually destroy Ghana’s environment.
Expressing his thoughts on the situation, he commended the Media Coalition Against Illegal Mining for bringing the gravity of the issue to the fore and educating the public on the urgent need to curb the practice. This according to him, pushed the government to start tackling the situation.
“The government was not really committed to the fight against galamsey,” he stated, adding that “They have only engaged in rhetoric and waste of money”.
The government has largely been struggling to tackle the menace and despite forming a task force, the illegal miners still find themselves back on the sites each time they are chased away.
