Abstract:
Majority of the world's poor living in rural areas are mainly engaged in agriculture to support their livelihood. In spite of the all these, there is concern about the growing non-agricultural informal activities as alternative sources of income in Uganda. It is in this context that, this research study seeks to assess changes of the socio-economic status among rock quarrying communities engage in small scale stone extraction with specific objectives to identify the appropriate mitigation activities to the perceived threats of quarrying to the health of communities compare economic contribution of stone quarrying against none stone quarrying activities towards welfare of households, and determine cost effective forest and related vegetation restoration measures for known lost environmental benefits as a result of quarrying activities in Ngetta sub-county, Lira district. The study relies on information collected qualitatively through individual interviews using a sample of 60 questionnaires coupled with personal observations in addition to documented data from published and unpublished articles on journals and internet.
Based on the findings, the results revealed that women are more involved in quarrying and farming than men. Significance level of quarrying impacts associated to dust pollution and vegetation loss was intolerant among the quarrying communities. However, the results also show severe level of magnitude of respiratory infections among the people doing quarrying due to dust pollution. The most appropriate mitigation measures to the perceived health threats, suggested in this study is the use of nose masks to reduce exposure to dust pollution, tree planting to reduce wind speed and putting of humps on roads to reduce accidents.
In conclusion, different economic activities among rock quarrying communities improves the socio economic status of households’ livelihood. However, quarrying is associated with the negative social and environmental health problems such as vegetation loss and respiratory diseases affecting the lives and the surrounding environment of the community in and around the quarrying sites in Ngetta. Therefore, it is recommended that protective gears such as noise mast should be provided to the people carrying out rock quarrying; involving communities in tree planting and putting humps on the road close to the trading centers.
