News:
October 16, 2024
Minority Leader, Dr. Ato Forson has said the nation is under the plague of unprecedented spate of illicit, illegal, uncontrolled and unregulated mining activities.
According to him the nation is on the precipice of a self-inflicted environmental genocide.
He made these remarks at the fifth meeting of the fourth session of the fourth Republic on of the eighth Parliament on Tuesday, October 15, 2024, when the House resumed from recess as part of his opening remarks.
“Our beautiful country, once called the Gold Coast to underscore the rich mineral deposits God has bestowed on us is fast becoming a pale shadow of itself. Our lands with all their rich flora and fauna are being destroyed by the day”, he lamented.
And further pointed out that, our once pristine rivers and water bodies are now looking as brown as coffee, having been poisoned to satisfy the insatiable greed of an unscrupulous few.
Again, many farmlands including cocoa farms have been destroyed and in their place are unattended pits and gullies from uncontrolled mining activities.
According to the Council for Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR), it may take up to 300 years to restore the quality of soil damaged by illegal mining.
“Rt. Hon. Speaker, it appears we are at war against ourselves, and the destructive effects are frightening and far-reaching. The reckless and criminal discharges of heavy metals such as mercury, lead and cyanide into our waterbodies and lands have already begun to have dire consequences on our health”.
He opined that medical experts have delivered a scary verdict on babies being born with various deformities such as the absence of limbs, eyes and other vital body parts we are at crises point. At the heart of this crisis are leadership failure, official complicity and lack of political will by the Akufo-Addo/Bawumia NPP government.
This House must rise to the occasion and bring the necessary pressure to bear on government to act, he affirmed.
The Minority leader also urged government to guard against the temptation to spend what it does not have as the country gears up for another election cycle, adding that such reckless fiscal indiscipline is what has landed our country in a debt hole and brought untold hardship on Ghanaians.
“I am reliably informed that the Akufo-Addo/Bawumia NPP government intends to dole out about GHS3, 000 per person and other assorted election-driven handouts to some 800,000 so-called farmers in the name of drought relief”.
It is obvious that the Akufo-Addo/Bawumia NPP government has not learned any useful lessons from the misuse of Covid-19 funds and borrowed funds on reckless consumption-driven expenditure.
This NPP government must be reminded that Ghana’s economy which they have badly mismanaged is still not out of the woods. Hence, strict adherence to fiscal responsibility rules must be upheld even in an election year, he emphasised.
Kwaku Sakyi-Danso/Ghanamps.com