Every time the price of gold goes up, my heart sinks - for it means
further intensification of the destruction of what is left, of our
natural heritage, by illegal surface gold miners.
The cost to society, at a time when global climate change is impacting
Ghanaian agriculture so negatively, of the activities of illegal
surface gold miners, is incalculable.
To compound the problem, many illegal surface gold miners often work in
tandem with illegal loggers in some forest-belt areas of Ghana.
They are causing great harm to the natural environment, in a vast
swathe of the Ghanaian countryside - depleting the remainder of Ghana's
forest cover; poisoning soils; compromising the quality of the
underground water table; and silting up streams and rivers.
If illegal gold miners and loggers are not forced to stop degrading the
Ghanaian countryside, we might very well end up spending most of the
wealth we generate as a people today, repairing the harm caused by those
potentially dangerous and mostly lawless individuals, driven by
unfathomable greed, tomorrow.
The time has come for officialdom to act firmly. We must halt the wanton
destruction of the natural environment by illegal gold mining, once and
for all.
Tel: 027 745 3109.
Email: peakofi.thompson@gmail.com
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