President John Dramani Mahama has directed the task force combating illegal small-scale mining in the country to confiscate excavators they come across and not burn them.
“I’ve told them not to burn the excavators. They should confiscate them,” the President disclosed in a meeting with members of the Christian Council at the Presidency in Accra on Friday.
The new directive marks a shift from the approach where excavators used in illegal mining activities were burnt on site in the past.
The renewed fight against the illegal mining menace which has left large swathe of lands degraded, water bodies polluted and forests depleted has come to the fore again, following revelations that illegal miners have returned to their nefarious activities.
To President Mahama, a more structured approach was needed if Ghana was to make any progress in the fight against the illegal mining menace.
He said it was estimated that about 1.8 million Ghanaians derived their economic livelihoods from the illegal mining sector which raises the need to create sustainable jobs.
Of the 280 forest reserves in the country, President Mahama said 43 were affected by galamsey.
A mobile team, he stated, has been deployed to report to the task force on illegal mining in forests and on water bodies to stem the tide of destruction being caused by illegal miners to the environment.
He said Government would soon convey a stakeholder’s dialogue on the subject and discuss the deployment of new technologies for sustainable mining.
With the new technology, he explained that “before you start a small scale mine, you must do what they call leach dam and then you line it with plastic and then you wash the gold water into the dam.
“After you finish…they have cleaning agents they put in the water which takes out all the toxins and then you can discharge the [cleaned] water back into the environment. So we’ll engage with the stakeholders and bring some of these new technologies to their attention.”
Chairman of the Council, Dr Hilliard Dela Dogbe, pledged the Council’s spiritual and physical support to the President and his government in the fight against illegal mining.
He said the Church partly takes responsibility for the menace and would embark on an education drive as most of the people engaged in the act were members of their respective churches.
That notwithstanding, Dr Dogbe noted that the political will to combat the menace was the most potent approach.
“We can speak to the moral conscience of the people and they can choose to listen or not listen. Beyond the moral conscience, we appeal to you, Mr President, to use your authority to say no to illegal mining and once you strike that strongly, no one will go across,” he entreated
BY JULIUS YAO PETETSI
