Ken Ashigbey, the Anti-Galamsey Coalition’s Convener, has expressed doubts about the new Blue Water Initiative’s efficacy and urgency, and he has questioned if sending out Blue Water Guards should be a top priority right now.
He made the case that, although the project is admirable, the immediate priority should be reclaiming water bodies and rehabilitating degraded forest reserves before sending out staff to monitor them in an interview with Point Blank on Citi FM on Monday, March 17.
He also questioned whether the guards could effectively carry out their assigned duties because they had not had the necessary training to deal with such a threat.
“To me, this is nice to have, but is it the thing we need to do immediately? I would say no. We have done this water guard thing in the past. The difference is that of the 2,000 they are going to deploy, 460 have been deployed now.
“What training has been given to these people? How long have these people been trained? It is something that you do after you have reclaimed these water bodies,” he stated.
His remarks come after Emmanuel Armah-Kofi Buah, Minister of Lands and Natural Resources, announced the Blue Water Initiative on Monday, March 17.
460 Blue Water Guards have been deployed for 24-hour monitoring as part of the campaign to rehabilitate contaminated water bodies, with ambitions to expand to 2,000 across the country.
However, Ashigbey maintains that such an endeavor might not provide the intended outcomes if the underlying causes of environmental degradation are not addressed first.