As the practice of illegal salt mining in Ada renders the Songhor Lagoon dead, the coming in of ElectroChem Ghana Limited a hundred percent Ghanaian own company revived the dead Songhor Lagoon in the Ada enclave.
At the Third World Network thirty years anniversary lecture, where ElectroChem Ghana Limited was portrayed as taking advantage of the indigenes of Ada, a member of the Communications team of ElectroChem, Mr. Bernard Korle set the record straight saying, “We took over unfortunately, people were mining in the bed of the Lagoon. They trap rainwater and bore hole to generate salt. They went further by applying this black robber thing which makes it even worse. At the end of the day was their practice internationally accepted so far as salt production is concerned? The answer is no”
He further pointed out that, everyone knew there was lagoon in Ada, but it was not more until the coming of ElectroChem which has gone through the process to acquire legitimate documents to operate.
Again, ElectroChem restored the Ada Songhor Lagoon to its former glory as the company spent millions of dollars on the ones deserted lagoon and there is pictorial evidence to that effect.
“We can have a similar forum where we will invite Third World Network to a forum like this for people to see the reality; millions of dollars were used to revamp the Lagoon. The company purchased jumbo machine, top machine wealth 17 million dollars to pump sea water into the Songhor Lagon. Before, sea water flows by gravity into the Songhor lagoon, but illegal actions prevent the sea water from getting in there and you needed a mechanical means to do that to come into the Ada Songhor for it to become its former state”.
Mr. Korle pointed out that but for ElectroChem, the Songhor will not have been restored and added that apart from the mining of the salt, there are other activities like fishing on going, in a previously dead Lagoon.
“The work the TWN has been doing in Ada, the protection of the communities against pollution and others and you make us aware that you work in collaboration with other organisations, and I have a document which says over the years you did a lot of advocacies to make sure that artisanal miners will learn and know how to mine responsibly”.
“In addition, the advocacy prior to ElectroChem coming, everybody can see that clearly the issue is prior to our coming; what was the state of the lagoon? It will interest a lot of people to know that the lagoon, the pride of Ada was gone; it’s a fact, something that Dr Yaw Graham saw and fought against”.
He also assert that apart from salt mining, opportunity has been given to the Ada people to work and queried if there are parts of Ghana where mining is done that there have not been pockets of issues. “There have always been issues of disagreement, and ours is not different from other places”.
The difference, he noted, is how we handle the situation. “The dialogue before we came there has been series of approach by other companies. They never succeeded because the Ada dynamic does not agree and our natural resources are under pressure; what are we doing to support local champions those of us who are local indigenous persons can be given that support at the end of the day these are our own, in this case ElectroChem is owned by one of our own”
We are not in Ada throwing freebies, it’s an understatement, we have not extended our activities beyond the old Songhor area; if you hear of we having issues in the community, it has to do with the creation of evaporation, it has to do with the construction of community pans for the communities, he added.
And pointed out that its untruth for anyone to say ElectroChem is engaged in the killing of persons in the Community who are opposed to their activities.
Kwaku Sakyi-Danso/Ghanamps.com
