Young Dee Group Chief Executive Officer Desmond Darko has urged Ghana’s leaders to address what he describes as the mindset driving illegal mining (galamsey), arguing that enforcement alone cannot end the menace.
He said efforts to stop illegal mining would remain ineffective if authorities failed to understand why people in some communities continued to depend on gold extraction for their livelihoods.
Speaking on Joy FM’s Personality Profile with Lexis Bill on Thursday, October 29, Mr Darko said the problem went beyond the enforcement of laws and required a change in attitudes, alongside practical alternatives for affected communities.
“Ghana is struggling to solve galamsey because the leaders are refusing to understand that galamsey is a psychological problem. It’s a mindset problem,” he said.
“And until they deal with the mindset, they can never solve galamsey in this country,” he added.
Alternative livelihoods
Mr Darko said some people in mining communities had spent much of their lives depending on rivers and other natural resources in their search for gold.
He questioned the effectiveness of demanding that such people abandon the activity without first addressing the economic circumstances and beliefs that sustained it.
“You are dealing with people in a community where their lifetime, the only way they know, is to go to the riverside and go and look for gold,” he said.
“And you are not giving them any alternative. You are not working on their mindset, and you think you can just go there and tell them to stop what they are doing,” he added.
He maintained that a lasting response to illegal mining required leaders to engage with the communities involved and address the factors that made the activity attractive to them.
Beyond enforcement
Mr Darko’s comments add to calls for approaches to galamsey that look beyond arrests and operations against illegal miners to consider the livelihoods of people who depend on mining.
His argument is that communities cannot be expected to abandon an established source of income without viable alternatives and efforts to change attitudes towards illegal mining.
Galamsey has remained a major environmental concern in Ghana because of the damage associated with illegal mining, including pollution of water bodies and the degradation of land.
Mr Darko said unless leaders recognised and addressed the mindset underpinning the activity, efforts to bring it to an end would continue to fall short.
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