Deputy Director of A Rocha Ghana, Daryl Bosu is blaming the government for the illegal mining menace that is destroying the livelihoods of individuals in mining communities.

According to him, the government's inability to heed the calls to curb the menace has left many jobless and also affected their health conditions.

Speaking on JoyNews, he said “the laws have given so much power to the executive and ministers that community voices don’t matter anymore. All of these things would have been averted if we had listened to the communities, listened to the chiefs, and paid attention to the health needs of the people.”

He stressed that until the health needs of citizens were placed ahead of the quest for gold, the country would continue to battle the canker.

Also, a Pathology Professor at the Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology (KNUST), Paul Sampene said these miners use toxic chemicals like mercury which pollute water bodies and had dire health implications.

He explained that inhaling these chemicals was especially dangerous for children and pregnant women.

“Children or fetuses who are developing in their mother’s uterus have the chance of having cognitive impairment. I haven’t seen anywhere an individual can easily go and have their blood cleaned of these heavy metals,” he said.

The Dean of the University of Energy and Natural Resources, Professor Emmanuel Arhin stressed that “there is a looming danger for everybody in this country called Ghana because our land has been polluted so much that you cannot trust anything that you eat, you cannot trust anything that you drink.”

He therefore appealed to the government to address the canker before it is too late.