Senior Vice President for IMANI Africa Kofi Bentil says when the activities of galamsey begin to bite the ordinary Ghanaians they will revolt as a way to curb the menace.
According to him, that will be one of the possible ways to solve the situation as it looks like intervention by governemnt seems not to be working effectively.
Speaking on Joy FM’s news analysis programme “NewsFile” on Saturday, February 15 on the issues emerging from the fight against galamsey, Kofi Bentil said he sometimes feels the ordinary citizens are doing more than enough to force individuals paid with taxpayers money to do their jobs.
With this, he believes it is a signal that the government is failing in the fight against galamsey.
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“As citizens, I think we are and sometimes I feel ordinary citizens who have day jobs have to take a lot of time to press people who are paid to do these things. Sometimes citizens do more than what they are to be doing and that tells you that maybe the state is failing, we could do and should do more of what constitution requires us to do but we need to get to the point when we can trust the people we put in government and the people we resource to do the work they have accepted to do, nobody begs people to run for public office and too much happens in this country where citizen groups have to get up and push people to what they have to do.
There have been a report of some missing excavators seized as part of the fight, some individuals have also been arrested with regards to this effect.
The Ghana Water Company has also threatened to shut down some of its plants as they are being affected by the galamsey operations.
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Kofi Bentil in response said he supports the actions of the Ghana Water Company and there will be a mass revolt if citizens start to feels the negative impact of the galamsey operations.
“We do things that are killing us, Ghana Water Company is shutting down plants and by the way, I support them on that, I think we have to get to the point where galamsey starts biting ordinary people directing then we will have a mass revolt, it shouldn’t be so no government wants to have that arrangement but if you have situation where people in a certain locality cannot get water they will charge and start taking the law into their own hands and driving out these galamsey people…”
