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Broadcast Journalist and Environmental Advocate, Erastus Asare Donkor, has rallied the federation to wantonness the long-held content that golden is the lone large pathway to livelihoods, arsenic portion of the broader combat against amerciable mining (galamsey).
He said the country’s conflict against biology demolition required not conscionable enforcement reforms but a deeper corporate mindset displacement that freed communities from economical dependency connected unsafe and destructive mining practices.
“It is besides important to enactment that we cannot enforce without empathy.
The combat against galamsey indispensable spell manus successful manus with alternate livelihood programmes. People request thing to unrecorded for and unrecorded on.
We indispensable put successful skills, agriculture, eco-tourism, and section enterprise. Otherwise, we volition lone beryllium pushing poorness from 1 pit to another,” helium said.
Mr Donkor made the telephone past Thursday, astatine the 20th Kronti ne Akwamu nationalist lecture organised by the Ghana Centre for Democratic Development (CDD-Ghana).
Lecture
Kronti ne Akwamu is the centre’s flagship yearly nationalist lecture connected ideology and governance.
It is aimed to span the spread betwixt reflection, probe and investigation connected 1 hand, and pro-democracy and bully governance advocacy connected the other.
This year’s variation was connected the theme, “Galamsey: A Country’s Search for a Solution successful Plain Sight,” and it brought unneurotic authorities officials, information agencies representatives, civilian nine organisations, the diplomatic community, researchers, academia and manufacture players, among others.
The crisis
Mr Donkor, who is presently an Assistant News Editor with the Multimedia Group Limited, lamented that the galamsey situation extended acold beyond wood loss, informing that large rivers specified arsenic the Pra, Offin, Ankobra, Birim and Tano were heavy polluted with toxic metals, successful immoderate cases much than doubly the WHO information limits.
He besides mentioned the terrible aerial contamination successful mining communities, wherever mercury is openly burnt, with concentrations successful places specified arsenic Talensi, reaching levels acold supra planetary information thresholds.
These exposures, helium said, were translating into alarming wellness outcomes, including rising commencement defects successful galamsey-affected districts, with two-thirds of caller cases traced to mothers surviving successful oregon astir mining zones.
Reforms
Mr Donkor called connected the authorities to urgently upgrade the Forestry Commission.
“It indispensable beryllium retooled and monitored to forestall the unfastened looting of our wood reserves, often successful the sanction of reclamation.
The Forestry Commission indispensable beryllium upgraded to a para-military status, trained to decently demarcate and antheral the wood frontiers of our country,” helium said.
Mr Donkor besides urged the Minerals Commission to operationalise an excavator-tracking strategy to forestall the mysterious “disappearance and reappearance” of machinery successful mining zones.
Additionally, helium called for h2o bodies and cardinal biodiversity corridors to beryllium declared nationalist information zones, enforced by a decentralised and well-resourced National Anti-Illegal Mining Operations Secretariat (NAIMOS) without governmental interference.
“Let's termination the golden mentality arsenic the lone large means of living.
Let's revive the NCCE and fto it play its captious relation of educating connected the effects of galamsey.
What we deficiency is not strategy; it is governmental volition and motivation courage,” helium said.
While advocating for the reclamation of degraded lands and desilting of rivers to reconstruct ecological balance, Mr Donkor stressed that MMDCEs should beryllium held accountable for quality crimes wrong their jurisdictions.
“Galamsey is not conscionable an biology crisis. It is simply a trial of leadership, of governance and of conscience.
If we neglect this test, our rivers volition transportation the representation of our silence. Our forests volition not forgive us,” helium added.
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