By: Maxwell Woyram Tsigbe
The Ministry of Lands and Ntaural Resources has on Monday, April 14, 2025, passed out a total of 453 personnel under its Blue Water Initiative upon completion of an intensive one-month training at the Ghana Navy Forward Base at Ezilibo in the Jomoro District of the Western Region.
In a three-phase training regimen comprising theoretical, physical, and practical components, the trainees, popularly referred to as Blue Water Guards, underwent an overarching drill to prepare them for the tasks ahead.
The Guards will subsequently be deployed to augment the efforts of the Ghana Navy in combatting illegal small-scale mining (also known as galamsey) by safeguarding the country’s major water bodies from further contamination due to galamsey activities.
As the first batch of an expected larger deployment of 2000 guards, the 453 officers will be stationed along River Pra, Tano, Ankobra, and River Bonsa among others.
Meanwhile, the five Naval Operation Basses set up across the river systems will supervise the activities of the Guards to ensure effective surveillance and response.
The Blue Water Initiative is an intervention programme in the NDC’s 2024 campaign manifesto aimed at curbing illegal small-scale mining activities while restoring the already destroyed water bodies, and to prevent others from suffering same fate in the country.
However, the Big Questions remain unanswered:
Why are successive governments unable to STOP galamsey despite its illegality?
Are the laws being enforced?
Is their enforcement non-discriminatory or some ‘Big People’ always have their way out.
Can Ghana really win the fight against Galamsey, and how soon?
Well, it remains to be seen if the Mahama-led NDC government will make a significant stride in the combat against illegal small-scale mining with its Blue Water Initiative as general perception holds politicians in top spot as being the brain behind most of the unlawful activities in the country.