Edward Kareweh, the former General Secretary of the General Agricultural Workers Union (GAWU), sat before the cameras, his expression grave.
He had come with a warning that could not be ignored: illegal mining, known locally as galamsey, was devastating Ghana’s rubber industry.
Kareweh recalled a time when rubber farmers had to contend with competition from oil palm and cocoa. “Mainly, it used to be oil palm and cocoa,” he explained. “Rubber grows where other crops also grow, so when you expand oil palm, then the land available for rubber expansion is taken away; if you expand cocoa production, then that land is also taken away. So they used to be that competition.”
But now, a new and more dangerous threat had emerged. Galamsey, once limited in scale, had grown into a modern scourge. Kareweh described it as more dangerous than any challenge the industry had faced before. “The advent of the modern-day galamsey is destroying existing rubber plantations, oil palm plantations, and cocoa plantations,” he stressed. Farmlands and plantations were being wiped out, leaving devastation in their wake.
The crisis had become so severe that some rubber farmers, seeing no other way out, had begun selling off their plantations to illegal miners. This, Kareweh warned, was compounding the disaster, accelerating the decline of rubber production in Ghana.
The consequences are already being felt. The Association of Ghana Industries (AGI) has sounded the alarm that rubber processing plants across the country are on the brink of collapse due to a severe shortage of raw materials. If the tide of galamsey is not stemmed soon, Kareweh’s warning may prove to be a grim prophecy fulfilled.
The future of Ghana’s rubber industry, once a source of hope for many farmers, now hangs in the balance, threatened by the relentless advance of illegal mining.
Source: Apexnewsgh.com
