February 22, 2021
By Aruna Kamara (Bo)
Residents of Kori Chiefdom in Moyamba District have raised grave concern over the pollution of Taia River by mining activities said to be taking place in the Northern Region of Sierra Leone.
Speaking to this medium, the Women’s Leader in Kori Chiefdom, Lucy Jabbie expressed utter dissatisfaction over the pollution of the Taia River. She said the river is their source of drinking water, among other livelihood coping mechanism.
According to her, “ we largely depend on this river not only for drinking purposes but has been one of the sources we rely on to take care of our children, send them to school.
She spoke of the effect of the pollution in killing their fish stock in the reason and the chemical effect that is hazardous to watering of the crops.
“Our crops wither away when we use the river to water and this has been a serious concern to the women and the youths, we want the government to look into our grave concerns,” Madam Jabbie said.
One of the youths at Kori Chiefdom, Christopher Morovia said that they have held consultative meetings with stakeholders to let the public know that the Taia river has been polluted and is posing a serious threat to human existence.
“For the past years, we have observed that the Taia river that we used to drink and was a source of livelihood has become polluted and for this year it has worsened,”he lamented.
He added that as youths of the chiefdom “we conducted a research to know what is responsible for the pollution and we discovered that the massive mining activities in Magburaka , in the northern region is responsible for the pollution of the Taia river.”
He said that this is the river that the people of Kori and the neighboring chiefdoms had been surviving and it is problem affecting several thousands of inhabitants who no longer rely on it for fishing and agriculture purposes.
Morovia called on the Government to speedily look into their concerns as they want their river to be restored to its former safe and environenental friendly form.
