“On our various pastoral and social visits to our people in their localities, as well as our many travels across the country, we see, denounce and cry over the wicked and greedy destruction of our forest resources,” says Religious Leaders in Ghana.
According to them in an October 17 release, “Cutting down of cash crops are on a massive scale, degrading of our land (soils), and polluting our river and water bodies with mining chemicals like mercury, chlorine, and cyanide thereby killing aquatic life including fishes.”
They expressed worry about how the eco-systems are being destroyed irreversibly soils are contaminated with poisonous chemicals, which are very difficult if not impossible to clean them up.
“Our people are drinking dangerously polluted water (some of our Mission Hospitals are recording increased strange diseases. Some women are reportedly being treated for increased cases of cervical and uterus cancers, others, including men and children are being diagnosed with kidney diseases, the rate of stillbirths is on the high and the annual average turbidity values of rivers and other fresh water bodies affected by galamsey activities is very alarming),” they lamented.
They Religious Leaders noted that “The impoundment of water for galamsey activities has over the years caused high ncidence and prevalence of buruli ulcers in a number of mining areas results from infection with Mycobacterium ulcerans, a slow-growing toxin producer that is found in aquatic habitats.”
“The deleterious impacts on our food and cash crops are so bad that some countries like Japan requires extra testing of our cocoa products before they can be accepted on their markets,” they said, adding, “The European Union recently threatened to place an embargo on some of our agricultural products and we are not certain about the future, which already looks gloomy.
They were also worried that “Marine life, our livestock, birds, insects and game reserves all depend on, drink and use these highly polluted waters also. Their meat and edible vegetation all end upon our dining tables.”
Adding, they said “We have become ‘living-dead-polluted-walking Ghanaians,’” hence, the need “to rise up and confront the situation to save our nation.”
They lamented that some Traditional Leaders were also responsible for allowing such ecological destructions in their jurisdictions. We call on such leaders to desist from this illegality and use their authority to ban galamsey in their domains to avoid further destruction of our natural resources.
They, however, commended traditional Chiefs who had courageously resisted galamsey practices in their territories for which reason there is no single mining activity allowed in some parts of Ghana.
“One major threat of galamsey to our country is that it has prevented many youths from going to school. Even though we may not see the immediate negative implication of this, it will definitely have an adverse impact on the economy and peace of our nation in the near future,” they emphatically stated.
They prayed and hoped that Ghanaians would stand up against galamsey and preserve the environment from further destruction, “to this end, we believe that certain actions ought to be taken immediately to end the menace of galamsey in our country.”
Source: Newswatchgh.com
