These greedy companies are tapping into the country’s vast reserves of sand, which is largely unregulated by government.
Communities should also know that sand is a valuable non-renewable commodity used mainly for mega-infrastructure projects in the rapidly expanding urban metropolis and global construction market.
It is a fact that the fast expanding urban settlement and growth in infrastructures development always comes with such. But, a careful consideration should be taken into, if not in the long run, all the mining areas would not be productive to people again.
According to UN, cities are expanding at an historic rate. Half the world’s population now lives in an urban settlement. Today there are 4 billion metropolitans.
Sand mining’s impact on the environment and society is devastating. And in most cases, of all these predicaments, it is the locals that suffer the most, as for millions of dollars of revenue accrued from mining by these mining companies, little or no royalties was utilised for the benefit of the affected communities.
It is in the news that there is growing anger among the youth in the coastal community of Bato Kunku over ‘abuse of the village quarry’ by Gimcom Sand Mining Company.
Last Thursday, some youth staged a peaceful protest to draw attention as well as to stop the said sand mining company from mining at the village quarry.
We all know that the cost of sand mining to the environment is immense. And most of the times, unregulated extraction, especially as what is happening in most of these mining sites in the country, is having a devastating impact on the lives and even area’s sensitive ecology.
The government should act now before it is too late. This is what happened in Faraba Bantang and Sanyang in Kombo East where lives were lost and the list goes on.
It is high time government through Geology Department and the National Environment Agency scrutinises and assesses the damage being done to the environment and these communities. The inhabitants of these mining sites at the moment wouldn’t realise the dangerous and negative impacts or exposure to environmental shocks, but time will tell.
Therefore, government should act now to avert any looming confrontation between the locals and the mining companies and by extension security forces.
To be forewarned is forearmed.