|
Getting your Trinity Audio player ready...
|
A sizeable number of fishes in the Ebi and Fia rivers have died due to galamsey activities upstream and threatened livelihoods of fishermen at Kamgbunli in the Ellembelle District, The Inquirer has learnt.
Mr Dauda Musah, Assembly Member for Kamgbunli electoral area, speaking to the media in an interview at Kamgbunli intimated that the practice of galamsey had led to widespread pollution of their rivers such as Rivers Fia, Ebi, and Amanzule, resulting in devastating effects on aquatic life.
“The muddy slurry efflux from galamsey sites in rivers Fia and Ebi seriously affects primary productivity and habitats of indigenous traditional fish such as “Bile” a local name for a catfish”.
“Fish harvested in the past month continued to develop a wound skin infection and rotten abdomen and scales begin to remove together” Mr Musah Indicated.
That, he noted, “caused red, swollen lesions on the fish skin, quickly becoming gaping wounds that become very difficult to consume or sell in the market making it economically unbearable since that’s their only source of livelihood”.
Fishers have therefore appealed to all stakeholders to come together and find the cause of the strange fish disease.
Small scale mining popularly called galamsey has been a significant environmental concern in recent years affecting Kamgbunli, a Community in the Western Region.
