Government says galamsey is raising the cost of treating water for homes and businesses.
Water Resources and Sanitation Minister, Cecilia Abena Dapaah, explained at a news briefing that due to the negative impact of illegal mining, especially those mining on water bodies, many water treatment equipment clog and break down, requiring huge amounts of money to fix them.
This, she says increases the cost of treating water which in turn may be passed on to the consumer.
“We all saw the bad water that was going through our machines. It’s very painful that government has to borrow money or look for funding to construct infrastructure (water systems) to provide potable water to all of us, and we have a few of muddying the water and destroying the water bodies with chemicals,” she noted.
She added: “We have machines that get clogged up every week and it’d have to be dismantled and cleaned or replaced at a cost, so surely, it augments our cost, and if the cost goes high naturally, we have to recoup some money to buy more machines.”
The Minister also explained the government’s plans to ensure that Accra is the cleanest city in Africa is on course.
She stressed that this government discontinued the sanitation day programme of the previous National Democratic Congress administration because they view sanitation and cleaning the environment as an everyday thing and not something to be done monthly.
“I believe, and it’s in line with His Excellency’s vision that every day is a sanitation day. We should not wait for one month before we clean our environment.
“Every house has its own environment, It’s our duty as citizens to make sure that as we have our bath and clean our homes, we should also clean our environment,” he said.
