Are our chiefs waking up at last from their sleep regarding the evil of galamsey?

The Internet is a funny place, isn’t it? You can be insulted on it by someone who is too cowardly to use his real name, but who thinks you are far game, He, of course, so that you can argue with him/her on an equal basis.

For such a person – usually a habitual “troll” (as the Internet calls them) – who has been following one’s stuff for years and can therefore recall things one had written long ago – cannot be taken seriously.

How can a person be so afraid of making his own views known, whilst criticising someone who lays himself open for intellectual inspection each time he opens his mouth by way of his byline?

Well, my “troll” has been at it again. I shouldn't, of course, take any notice of him/her. But in this particular instance, he could appear to have a point and so must be answered.

I’d published a piece entitled THIS IS SIMPLY CRAZY

In which I “ONCE AGAIN” drew the attention of our authorities to the fact that the Ghana Water Company had told the populace that it had stopped treating water at its treatment plant at Bunso, because the “turbidity” level of the Birem River, from which the company draws its water, had gone up too high.

I pointed out that a similar shutdown of the Bunso plant had occurred in April 2020. I suggested that it was “crazy” that another shutdown had not been anticipated, with patrolling on the Birem River increased to prevent it from being polluted again.

“Crazy” because it wasn’t an “asteroid” from heaven that had fallen into the river to pollute its waters, but human action carried out by Ghanaians and their foreign agents. Birem, having been polluted as far as Kyebi (the President’s own home-town, where it also caused a shutdown of the water treatment plant) was definitely a target of the galamseyers and therefore ought not to have been neglected (in terms of providing it with an effective defence against another attack by the galamseyers.)

My troll wrote back: “Are you yourself, the writer, not ‘crazy’ by writing again and again on this issue, continually calling on the people who rule us, to stop the pollution of our water-bodies?” He/she asked: “Can’t you see that they are not interested in saving our water bodies?” the rulers “are only using propaganda terms to pretend that they care?”

I would like to ask the troll, “So I should fold up my barns and not say anything? That’s too cynical an approach. The duty of a journalist is to try and arouse the consciences of his readers so that they too can contact their MPs/Ministers and influence them to do something about the problem.

If we all sit down and keep our mouths shut, we shall be playing the galamseyers’ game. For what they want is freedom to operate without inciting a public reaction, knowing as they do, that “silence” can be taken for “consent”.

I am glad to report that if I am “crazy” because I continue relentlessly to campaign against galamsey, I am not the only one affected by the disease!

For both the President and the Vice-President of the Ghana National House of Chiefs have been drawing attention to the ongoing wanton devastation that the galamseyers are wreaking on our easter-bodies and farms.

It is true that the chiefs have been taxpayers– negligently slow in accepting their natural DUTY to protect the territory over which they rule from the plunderers who are destroying the people’s water bodies and farms.

They would organise mass action, through their traditional, military "Asafo” groups, to fight any marauders who invaded their areas to act as rapists (akodimmaa) armed robbers (adwotwafuor), and ritualist/cultist murderers (atetenkrona).

Is that way of harming society any different from making it possible for children to be born by women today who turn out to be deformed? Babies who lack vital organs (including eyes and genitalia?

Is the poisoning of water by arsenic and mercury any different from putting actual poisons like Lysol in people’s drinking water? Why should mercury poisoning be treated differently just because the mercury comes out of using it to refine gold?

From the sand obtained from riverbeds? I hope the National House of Chiefs will bite the bullet and present proposals to the Government that can enable it to provide funding to assist in the resurrection of Asafo groups in each traditional area.

With good leadership from the chiefs, the Asafo tradition can be very rapidly re-established for local self-defence (as the continued use of the Dentsefo and the Tuafo Asafo groups in Winneba For the annual Deer-hunt festival demonstrates.

Each chief should re-establish the Asafo, in his towns and villages. Did they not take part in the ceremonies marking each chief’s enstoolment? Why have they now been forgotten, when society needs them to provide effective protection against the galamseyers?

The chiefs should not be frightened of their own Asafo groups, for no chief who acts strongly to protect his people’s water bodies and farms from galamseyers, needs to fear destoolment.

But of course, the same thing cannot be said for the corrupt chiefs who mouth statesmanlike pledges in public but then secretly take bribes from the unscrupulous galamseyers and their foreign collaborators.