The senior presidential advisor, Yaw Osafo Maafo, has partly blamed traditional leaders for the increasing pollution of river bodies in the country by illegal miners.
Osafo Maafo lamented that some chiefs in areas where illegal mining, also known as “galamsey,” takes place, offer their lands to the miners, who then pollute the water bodies beyond purification.
Yaw Osafo Maafo spoke at the 23rd General Meeting of the Presbyterian Church of Ghana at Kwahu Abetifi in the Eastern Region.
“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.”
He also expressed concern about the growing problem of corruption, despite the high number of Christians in Ghana.
“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.”