The Minister for Sanitation and Water Resources, paid a working visit to Prestea Huni-Valley Municipality on Monday, 5th June, 2023 at Himan Community Center. As part of the visit, the Hon. Minister engaged the Community on issues relating to the Illegal Mining on our water bodies and other Sanitation/Environmental challenges in the Community and the Municipality as a whole.
In attendance were, Hon. Cecilia Abenaa Dapaah, Minister for Sanitation and Water Resources, Hon. Noah Tumfo Chief Director MSWR and other dignitaries from the ministry, Hon. Isaac Dasmani PhD the Municipal Chief Executive (MCE) for PHMA, Municipal Coordinating Director (MCD) Mr. Emmanuel Gyan, Nana Nteboah Prah the Divisional Chief for Himan Prestea Traditional Council and his Elders, Friends from the media and other invited quest.
Speaking to the gathering, Hon. Cecilia Abenaa Dapaah said, the Ministry is responsible for taken care of our water bodies and any environmental related issues, the purpose of this tour is to help put in more effort to prevent illegal activities that destroys our environment as well as our water bodies. She assured that, the central government has no intention to stop people from mining or never against mining but rather against the illegal activities that destroys the lands and water bodies, these illegal activities are causing danger to all living things that depends on our water bodies for survival which includes human beings as well as fishes and other animals that serves as food for consumption. We can all accept the fact that, because of these activities, it’s now difficult to find snails, crabs and other fishes that we must have gotten them for free to consume, when we start with proper operations in other to end all illegal activities that damages our natural environment, trust me we are going to get fishes back again she added. Again Nana made a suggesting about engaging the locality directly involved in the fight against galamsay and I have taken notice of it, surely we will take it into consideration, permit me to also talk about this observation upon my arrival about heap refuse in some vital areas of the community, am going to liaise with the MCE to make sure this garbage is being remove immediately. In addition, the government of his Excellency Nana Addo Dankwa Akuffo-Addo has secured a loan to provide portable water to the various communities across the country and if the source of water is been polluted, the effort of the central government would be meaningless also there is a lot of money that goes into the operations to stop illegal mining,
if this activities are to be stopped those of funds can be allocated to other areas for development, we have recorded all your contributions and it will be considered as such, she
concluded.
The municipal Chief Executive Hon. Isaac Dasmani PhD, in his address lamented that, one of the factors affecting our living nowadays is how the difficulty in getting portable water from natural source for our dairy activities, this is because all our water bodies are being destroyed by illegal activities. Drilled boreholes are not the best for our communities because the presence of iron our land contains, the natural streams/rivers are best source of water for us, we only complain about the bad nature of the rivers forgetting the living organisms that depend on this water bodies for survival. Let us come together to support this call from the government
to make sure we preserve these water bodies for the future generation. I can assure you that our municipal security task force and mining committee task force will continue their work in the in the fight against illegal mining especially within our water areas. The govern has given us
a green light to start processing our papers for community mining, so very soon the youth will get job to do, let all try our possible best to help make this fight against illegal mining a successful one, he added.
The Chief of Himan-Prestea Nana Nteboah Prah (ii), in his speech said if you listen to Ghana Water Company and heard the amount of money that goes into treatment of water alone and we still involve in activities that destroys our gifted water by nature, then you will see that we are our own enemies, it is therefore the need for us to pay attention to the authorities and put
a stop to this bad behavior, again we must accept our fault as citizens and start doing the right thing because is time for us all to start doing the needful that will help prevent illegal mining within our lands. Please permit me to add this suggestion, when you look at it is situated in several District and towns across the country, we the Wassa people are at the middle enclave, the Nzema people are at the lower enclave whilst the Sefwi people are at the upper enclave, so I think we can start the operation from the top of the River instead of concentrating much at the middle part of the river because if the top is being destroyed the effort here would meaningless, as the adage goes, ‘a fish starts rotten from it head’ thank you