Professor Kofi Agyekum, the Head of the Department of Linguistics at the University of Ghana has said that the negative effect of galamsey is way bigger than witchcraft.
According to him, witches don’t have the power to extend beyond their respective families but the activities of galamsey affect everybody and not just in the communities where the mining is taking place.
Professor Kofi Agyekum said based on the evidence he has gathered from health professionals, he will gladly choose witchcraft or witches over galamsey if given the option to choose the lesser evil of the two.
“If you place a person engaged in galamsey and a witch side-by-side, I will choose a witch. Do you know that a witch does not extend their craft beyond their family? There’s a saying that the witch causing your problems is from your own home. What a witch does is to destroy someone by inflicting a disease on them or by killing them, but they are unable to kill beyond their family.
“But what the person engaged in galamsey does is to destroy the land and the fruits it bears. Are you aware that some heavy metals have been found in the yam we export abroad? This tells us that those engaged in galamsey are killing all of us slowly.”
“Health professionals have found in the Konongo areas that newborns have certain diseases that threaten their overall development as humans. So, I see the person engaged in galamsey to be more atrocious than a witch,” Prof. Agyekum added.