The River Banku serves domestic and commercial purposes for people in the town of Beposo in the Ashanti region.
Joseph Owusu, who is owner of the pigs, said the water body has been contaminated with poisonous chemicals due to galamsey activities.
He explained that the pigs died after the caretakers of his piggery fetched water from the poisoned river for the animals.
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“This is what is happening here in the Bosome Freho District. The galamaseyers have polluted the river here and, so, we cannot use it for anything,” Mr. Owusu said, as quoted by Classfmonline.
“My 25 pigs have all died because we fetched water from the river that we didn’t know had been polluted with dangerous chemicals, and gave to the animals to drink. I spent GH50,000 on the farm.”
He added that farmers in the community have resorted to relying on a nearby borehole to irrigate their farms as a result of the pollution of the River Banku.
Mr. Owusu said he filed a report with the District Chief Executive of the area, Yaw Danso, who later sent his officials as well as experts from the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to ascertain the situation.
“But when the EPA officials came, they didn’t give me their repor; they only said the issue of galamsey is beyond them, so, I should deal directly with the local authority, which is the assemblyman and the DCE’s office.
“I went to the DCE to find out what was happening but he has not given me any feedback yet,” he added.
Meanwhile, the DCE, when contacted said, he instructed the Operation Vanguard team to take up the matter, who in turn confirmed that indeed there were some ongoing activities of some illegal small-scale mining in the area.