GALAMSEY IS OUR WAY OF SURVIVAL. (Illegal gold mining)

By: Geoffrey Buta, Kenyasi. Brong Ahafo Region.

Underground gold deposits in the soils of Kenyasi in the Asutifi South district in the Brong Ahafo Region have attracted hundreds of young men looking to make a living from illegal mining also known as Galamsey.

Accidents are common, Conditions are tough and dangerous. Many youth have lost their lives due to this bad practice where mine sites collapsed on them.

The ore is hacked and shoveled from a dark very warm pits and tunnels before being transported to another site where the gold is extracted, often with the unregulated use of highly toxic mercury.

Miners are forced to rest on Tuesdays which is a special day for the river gods, where mining, fishing and farming activities is an abomination.

Some women with their babies engage in the same physical labour as men – using long chisel and sledgehammers to break rocks into stones, sorting them out, scooping, and hauling in buckets and bags of gravel on their head.

Hundreds work here, which seems like a whole community on its own. With vendors selling pork meat, water, fufu, banku, alcoholic and soft drinks, carpenters making tools, and motorbike-taxi drivers transporting the workers.

Many of the miners are migrants from the three Northern Region of Ghana, who are seen as the hardest working among others.

Some miners take a break in a complex of hand-dug tunnels and caves in the rock during the night, whiles

Despite the risks involved in working here, the youth are rather determine to survival and provide for their families due to the  massive youth unemployment and extreme poverty.

God have given us natural resource and strength to work, we cannot depend on the government to provide are need for us, said a miner.

Sometimes is scary, but we have no option than to risk our lives to feed our families, he added.

Ghana education service are also worried about the continues school dropout and performance in the area.

Early morning and mid afternoons you will see some miners washing down in a nearby river after their work.

                                                    A miner coming from a pit

                                                    A miner with a glove

                                                  Some kids at the illegal mining site

                                      A woman with a baby carrying a bag of ore

                                        Miners returning from the pit

                                                   some women re bagging the ore

                                                  A boy pounding the gravels

                         Supervisor with money ready to pay miners

                                            Miners with a touch light

                                             Miners washing down after work