Accra, April 10,- The government
has estimated US$400 million as the amount needed to dredge and clean the heavy
mercury content in the Ankobra River in the Western Region due to the
activities of illegal small-scale mining.
This followed the assessment of
the turbidity level of the River by a private research firm, which was
commissioned by the government last year.
Turbidity is the cloudiness or
haziness of a fluid caused by large numbers of individual particles that are
generally invisible to the naked eye, similar to smoke in air. The measurement
of turbidity is a key test of water quality.
Professor Kwabena
Frimpong-Boateng, Minister of Environment, Science, Technology and Innovation,
who announced this at the Meet-the-Press Series in Accra on Tuesday, said
reclaiming the mined areas would be costly since it involved about 10 per cent
of the country’s landmark.
He said between February and
April last year, the Ghana Water Company (GWC) could not process raw water from
water treatment plants at Osino, Sekyere-Hemang and Daboase because of
increasing turbidity of the water.
He said however, the operation of
Operation Vanguard was yielding some positive response, and that some of the
water bodies could now be treated for consumption by the GWC.
He said intelligence report
gathered by the Ministry revealed that, eight mining firms were secretly
involved in illegal mining operations and discharging the waste into water
bodies, thereby, costing the GWC huge sums of money to purify raw water for
consumption.
He said before the ban on
small-scale mining would finally be lifted, government would conduct a baseline
survey to examine the level of pollution of water bodies, mining communities
and fish stock, which would help the nation to source funding from a global
environment facility for the reclamation exercise.
Commenting on newly discovered
mineral resources in the country, the Minister said there were high deposits of
lithium in Volta and Western regions, which could be used to produce mobile
device batteries.
“We allow people outside to
exploit the lithium and export them in their raw state.
“We should have an arrangement
where a percentage of the lithium is processed here so that we can produce the
batteries for our own use,” he said.
Prof. Frimpong-Boateng said the
government had drafted a Zero Plastic Policy and that after all the necessary
consultations had been done, the nation would have a plastic policy to manage
the plastic waste phenomenon.
Regarding the call for the
complete ban of plastic materials in the country, the Minister explained that
initial consultation and study into that had proven it would not be feasible
for the time being, and so government would wait until the policy was adopted
to guide the way forward.
“It will not be a whole-sale
ban... I’m not going ahead of the policy, but I think that it would be prudent
to start with the ban of carrier bags so that when you go to a shop, you can
keep your things in a cotton bag,” he said in response to an answer by
journalists.
The Minister said as part of
efforts to address the plastic waste menace, there were already some public-private
sector initiatives where plastics were being used to manufacture pavement
stones and plastic concretes for the building and road construction.
GNA
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