'GALAMSEY', a threat to future generations

Ghana is endowed and blessed with a lot of mineral resources. These mineral resources can be mined in many places across the country. Common among these resources are gold and diamond.

Three main ways can be used to extract gold. These are: by digging deep down into the belly of the earth to touch the rocks. These rocks have gold in them. Also inclusive of these ways of mining the gold is by removing the surface of the earth to reach the rocks. In addition, one can equally wash the sand in rivers. As soon as the sand is washed away from the rocks, the gold can be seen.

What used to be the practice in times past, was the use of hoes and shovels to remove the sand in the rivers. The sand is washed to get the gold. This gold is expensive in value.

The word, 'Galamsey', simply means 'gather and sell'! The local people in a mining community in the Western region of Ghana called Prestea, first corrupted the phrase, 'gather and sell', used by the earliest foreigners to mean, 'Galamsey'. To 'gather and sell', literally mean to collect the grains of gold and sell'.

Nowadays, people mobilize heavy duty equipment and machines to dig and wash the gold stones and sand in rivers. They also use chemicals in the process, thereby polluting the water which people drink and kill the fishes. Many farmlands have also been distroyed.

Many young people in these mining communities have abandoned school to do 'galamsey'. They work as labour hands for operators of these illegal mining activities. These young people get injured or wounded in the process and even die in large numbers, when the pit they work in accidentally, collapses. They forget that they are our future leaders to govern this nation. The quest to chase after money and get rich quick is misleading and detrimental to all.

In conclusion therefore, all hands must be on deck to minimize or better still, eliminate this threat posed by 'galamsey' drastically in our country. A stitch in time, saves...!!!

Category:

Society 

Oganisation:

Clevenard

Writer:

Charles Ollivant Akpome

Location:

Ghana