Pollution of White Volta River, Threat to Human and Aquatic Life

Story By Kumbundoo Iddrisu

Nawuni, a small community, Northwest and 45 minute drive from Tamale, is located in the Kumbungu District of the Northern Region. The White volta, one of the longest rivers in Ghana passes through this community whose inhabitants are largely Ewes with pockets of Dagombas. The main economic activities in this community are fishing and the farming of vegetables. If water is life, Nawuni is the guardian, as it is home to treatment plants of the Ghana Water Company Limited which since 1972 has treated and currently supplies three million gallons of water every day to five districts in the Northern Region including the Sagnarigu Municipality and the Tamale Metropolis.

Despite its strategic location and relevance, Nawuni is fraught with challenges that look like only eternity can resolve. The community has become notorious for its annual entertainment of flood waters which very often leave in it wake, unimaginable devastation that sometimes may take the people years to recover. Beyond the perennial floods, lies an enormous sanitation challenge that appears overlooked but continues to pose serious health threats to the people.

With some 84 households and nearly three thousand people, the community has no single public or household toilet facility. Residents do no not also have any proper means of disposing liquid or solid waste and as result have resorted to desecrating the very river that holds the means to their livelihood. They openly defecate and throw rubbish indiscriminately into the White Volta River. Stand on the bank of the river and the sad scenes that greet you will be the sight of sacks of rèfuse, plastic bottles and human excreta wrapped in plastic bags. If you also stay a bit longer by the bank, you are likely to see this strange scene where men will travel considerable distance with their boats to defecate into the river.

It is perhaps not surprising that as per statistics available at the Dalun Health Center, a nearby community, where the residents go to seek healthcare, cholera and other stomach related ailments are the most prevalent conditions.

With the apparent health challenges aside, their means of livelihood which is fishing is also under threat as the constant pollution of the river has diminished its fishing stock. 

Mohammed Habib is a fisherman. He knows the Volta like the back of his palm as he has fished in it with his father since the age of five but as his dad becomes old and too frail to take the boat, Habib, for half a decade now, has been paddling the boat and casting the nets to provide for a family of six including himself, his wife whom he took not too long ago, his father and two younger siblings. I met him at the river bank with a heap of worms he gathered before him. He is cutting the wriggling creatures into pieces to fix into hooks in preparation for a fishing expedition.

He said to me that a good catch could fetch him 200 Cedis in a day but the problem is,they have been experiencing dwindling fortunes in recent years. He pointed to an empty space further upstream and said women usually come all the way from Tamale to wait for them there and to buy their fresh fish but the table has turned as the unfavourable fortunes mean the buyers don’t come anymore. Now, they will go through an extra hussle to either smoke or fry the fish and travel to the regional capital to look for buyers, a situation Habib laments since it has turned pricing of their goods out of their favour. 

Asked whether the low catch could be attributed to the incessant pollution of the White Volta, Habib replies in the affirmative. He said like humans, fish cannot thrive in the dirt.

“Fish and people are the same. They don’t like dirty things but everyday we come and throw rubbish in this water, we do toilet in it and they eat them and may die even before we catch them,” Habib noted.

Peter Agbavor, known popularly as Soldier, apart from fishing also operates an engine boat that ferries people and goods across to communities beyond the river. He confirms to me all that has been said by Habib. He said before they virtually were casting their nets behind their homes but for the constant pollution which has diminished the fish stock, they now are forced to travel farther in their boats to fish and this sometimes means passing the night in the Volta. Soldier, also lamented the disposal of rubbish in the river is not only detrimental to aquatic life but to themselves as sometimes their nets are destroyed when instead of trapping fish, they trap sacks of rèfuse, bags of fecal matter and Others. He appealed that authorities build for them household latrines and place rèfuse containers at vantage points to enable the proper disposal of solid waste.

Assembly Member for Nawuni Electoral Area, Hon. Alhassan Yussif, said the poor sanitation situation remains a bigger challenge and something he does not sleep over. He disclosed that relentlessly he has pursued the Kumbungu District Assembly to intervene and to help his people overcome the sanitation challenge but has always been met with one excuse or another. For the pollution of the White Volta, he revealed that engineers of the Ghana Water Company have complained severally to him to tell his electorates to stop disposing waste into the river as the cost for treating and distribution of raw water has more than tripled.  He tells me that he and his people have no option than to defecate and throw waste into the river as they have no other ways to rid their community of filth.

The Assembly Member concludes our interview by appealing to benevolent individuals, Groups and Non Governmental Organisations to come to the rescue of his people.