The incessant encroachment on quarry sites across the country has been blamed on utility companies who provide encroachers – mostly squatters – with water and electricity.

Owner of one of the leading stone quarry companies in Ghana, Mr EY Sarpong, has said discouraging settlers too close to quarry sites has been made more difficult because utility providers constantly flout the law.

Mr Sarpong, who is also an executive member of the Commercial Quarry Association, says the spate of encroachment on their space – sometimes as close as five metres from dynamite store houses – is snowballing into a major urban catastrophe.

“Authorities don’t care. Why should Electricity Company give power to people around explosive magazines? I can’t understand,” Mr Sarpong said.

He was speaking Thursday on news analysis programme PM Exxpress on the Joy News Channel on MultiTV.

Following a fatal blast at an abandoned quarry site in the Eastern Region last year, there have been calls for quarry owners who operate close to residential areas to be sanctioned.

The Paebo quarry disaster killed one person and destroyed many houses after explosives at a warehouse accidentally blasted.

Speaking on PM Express, Mr Sarpong’s, whose ESM Quarry has been encroached upon, says quarry owners are not to blame for the closeness of their operation sites to settlements.

He said as per the law, before most of the quarries are established, a buffer of 500 metres is allocated but this buffer soon gets inundated by settlers, most squatters.

“Sometimes they [setters] are very violent and even your security alone cannot match them. They come in, group as landguards and sometimes when we close the following day one single-room is there,” he said.

Minister for Lands and Natural Resources, Nii Osah Mills, who also spoke on the programme acknowledged the problem but admonished district and municipal authorities to be proactive and ensure encroachers are prevented from settling before they become comfortable.

Click audio file above for more of the discussion on PM Express.