Former Chief Executive Officer of the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), Dr. John Kingsley Krugu, has criticized the Blue Water Guards Initiative, claiming that it creates redundancy in the institutions already tasked with safeguarding the country’s water bodies.
In an exclusive interview on Channel One Newsroom on Tuesday, April 8, Dr. Krugu explained that the previous administration had trained individuals as Water Guards to combat illegal mining in water bodies.
However, he pointed out that these individuals failed to serve their intended purpose due to institutional limitations.
Dr. Krugu cited the existence of key institutions like the Water Resources Commission, Minerals Commission, and the navy, stressing that training another group of Water Guards would only create unnecessary duplication.
“Under the previous government, Water Guards were trained. As the National Coordinator for Landscape Restoration and Small-Scale Mining then, I was part of the people who always went to the Naval Command to graduate these Water Guards. We have taken that route.
“As a matter of fact, those Water Guards never got to the field. It was about an institutional issue because you have the naval commander train them, then you have the Water Resources Commission, then you have the Minerals Commission.
“If you are captured under the Minerals Commission, then the Water Resources will say they are in charge of the Water Bodies, then you have the Navy, so all of that did not amount to anything.
“Then suddenly I saw that we are going to train another group of people in the same thing. That is not the way to go,” he stated.