The Ghana Water Company Limited has reiterated that it is burdened with spending huge sums of money on chemicals to treat high turbidity levels of raw water at various extraction stations.

Managing Director of the company, Clifford Braimah, attributes the rising cost to the pollution of water bodies through illegal mining activities.

With increasing pollution, the company has had to consistently replace damaged equipment to manage rising turbidity levels of water bodies.

“Under normal circumstances when we treat the water, we have about five percent but because of the high turbidity in some cases, we throw up to 50 percent away.

“So instead of throwing five percent and having 95 litres to supply to the people, you are rather throwing 50 litres away so the 45 litres, how are you going to account for it? That will continuously cause rationing or demand management and if we don’t do that we will not be able to serve everybody,” he explained.

The Minister for Sanitation and Water Resources, Cecilia Abena Dapaah, has been visiting some mining communities in the Ashanti Region to assess the state of water bodies.

She expects all relevant ministries to join forces to chase out ‘galamseyers’, adding that “every town and village in the region should have its own task force” to fight the menace.

“We will go region by region to find out what is happening to our water bodies. We are the sector responsible for our water bodies and water resources, we came to meet the chiefs and they have given us food for thought that if possible we should have task forces in all districts and I took the advise,” she said.

Meanwhile, the District Chief Executive for Atwima Mponua, Isaac Kofi Marfo, says over 20 persons have been arrested in connection with activities of illegal mining in the area.

He added that seven people were also arrested with the help of Atutumahene and the soldiers.