Source: newsthemegh.com
Yaw Osafo Maafo, a senior presidential advisor, has attributed some of the growing pollution of the nation’s water bodies by illegal miners to traditional elders.
Osafo Maafo bemoaned the fact that certain chiefs in regions where illegal mining, commonly known as “galamsey,” occurs donate their lands to the miners, who subsequently contaminate the water bodies past the point of recovery.
In the Eastern Region at Kwahu Abetifi, Yaw Osafo Maafo addressed the 23rd General Meeting of the Presbyterian Church of Ghana.
“As we observe the damage that galamsey is causing to the environment, should we permit a few people’s desire for financial gain to jeopardize the very source of the water that we depend on for our daily needs?
There are places where you can’t even filter the water, and in places where you can, we’re spending more than three times what we used to, all in front of our chiefs who donated the land to the galamsey.
Despite Ghana’s large Christian population, he also expressed alarm about the corruption issue’s growing severity.
“There is something wrong even with the message we convey to this 72 percent of the public if corruption starts to get worse and worse when 72% of us are Christians.
We must reflect and, together with the administration, take specific steps to rid the nation of corruption. We cannot simply continue to talk about corruption without taking any action.