Adu Koranteng Writes
There is no polite way to say this anymore: Ghana is under environmental and public health siege, and those with the power to stop it are either complicit, incompetent—or cowardly.
While politicians hold press conferences, our rivers are turning to sludge. While ministers issue statements, our children are dying of mercury poisoning. While authorities look the other way, illegal mining syndicates are operating in broad daylight, poisoning the land, the water, and the people.
We are living through a national emergency, but acting like it’s a minor inconvenience.
Where Is the Leadership?
The evidence is overwhelming:
Over 90% of river systems in mining regions are contaminated with mercury and cyanide.
Forest reserves are being torn apart by excavators as authorities turn a blind eye.
Communities are losing access to clean water, fertile land, and basic food security.
Hospitals are recording an alarming rise in kidney and liver failure, particularly among the poor.
Children are being born into poisoned environments—before they can speak, they are already sick.
And yet, no state of emergency has been declared. No national mobilization. Just more talk.
What exactly are we waiting for? A mass funeral?
Who’s Really Benefiting from Galamsey?
Let’s stop pretending the so-called “galamseyers” with shovels and headlamps are the real problem. They are pawns.
The real criminals are the ones in suits—the politicians, the traditional leaders, the foreign businessmen, and the well-connected elite who fund, protect, and profit from this destruction.
They are hiding behind bureaucracy while villages disappear.
They are signing permits while forests are gutted.
They are laundering blood gold while hospitals overflow.
We cannot solve this problem until we are honest about who is keeping galamsey alive.
This Is Not Just Environmental—It Is a Health Crisis
In the past five years:
Kidney failure cases in mining communities have tripled, according to the Ministry of Health.
Mercury has been found in locally grown vegetables, fruits, fish, and even breastmilk.
Water treatment plants are shutting down, unable to purify what flows through once-pristine rivers.
In the Pra River basin alone, mercury levels are 100x above WHO limits.
Ghanaians are not just drinking dirty water.
They are drinking death—slow, irreversible, and unacknowledged.
Generations Are Being Erased
Ask the farmers of Awaso, the fishermen of Tarkwa, or the children of Kyebi. They will tell you:
“We have lost everything.”
Fields once rich with cocoa now grow nothing.
Rivers once full of fish are dead.
Mothers are burying their babies—not from disease, but from contamination.
This is not sustainable, this is not development, this is a slow national suicide.
The President Must Declare a State of Emergency. NOW.
Enough excuses. Enough committees. Enough diplomacy. We need war-level urgency.
We demand that President John Mahama declare an official State of Emergency in all galamsey-affected zones and take the following immediate actions:
- Deploy the military and environmental task forces to stop illegal operations. 2. Revoke ALL questionable mining licenses, regardless of who owns them.
- Seize equipment and prosecute financiers—not just poor laborers.
- Provide emergency water, food, and medical screenings to affected communities.
- Launch a national reforestation and river restoration initiative.
Anything less is betrayal.
The Clock Is Ticking
The longer we wait, the more irreversible the damage becomes.
Let history not say we had all the data, all the signs, all the cries for help—and chose to do nothing.
Let this not be another editorial collecting dust on the desks of indifferent leaders.
Let this be the editorial that forced a government, a nation, and a people to wake up.
Ghana is bleeding. Who will stop the hemorrhage?
Not with press statements.
Not with symbolic gestures.
But with real, unapologetic, decisive action.
The time to act is not tomorrow. It is now.
Kwabena Adu Koranteng is an award-winning investigative journalist reporting on environmental, human rights, and corruption issues in Ghana and West Africa.
