Yaw Osafo Maafo, a top counselor to the president, has attributed some of the growing contamination of the nation’s river systems by illegal miners to traditional elders.
Osafo Maafo bemoaned the fact that certain chiefs in regions where illicit mining, or “galamsey,” occurs lend their lands to the miners, who then contaminate the water bodies beyond repair.
At the 23rd General Meeting of the Presbyterian Church of Ghana at Kwahu Abetifi in the Eastern Region, Yaw Osafo Maafo gave a speech.
“Look at what galamsey is doing to the land, and should we allow monies that a few people want to make to destroy the very base of water that we need to drink? There are areas where you cannot even purify the water and where you can, we are spending more than three times what we used to spend in purification and all this is happening in the direct face of our chiefs that gave the land for the galamsey.”
Despite Ghana’s large Christian population, he also voiced alarm about the corruption issue’s rising severity.
“If 72 percent of us are Christians and corruption begins to grow from bad to worse, then there is something wrong with even the message that we give to this 72 percent of the population. We need to do some retrospection and as a country, together with the government, take certain actions to redeem the country from corruption and can’t just keep talking about corruption without doing anything about it.”
Source: Mybrytfmonline.com/Joseph Asare
