Last year, a mining consultant explained that the efforts being made by the government to fight the growing incidences of illegal mining was not convincing enough.
Seth Worlasime said that the government was pretending to fight galamsey even though there had been a number of initiatives made in tackling the menace.
“As a country, we pretend to fight corruption and forming ad hoc task force has been our style for fighting corruption. Forming taskforce all over to fight galamsey is what our politicians do. We have been trying to fight it as long as it has been with us,” he said.
Read the full original story as first published by GhanaWeb but sourced from 3news.com on Thursday, November 26, 2020, below:
A mining consultant has said that the government is only pretending to fight illicit small scale mining (galamsey) in the country.
According to Seth Worlasime, the measures against this particular trade has been heavily politicized by the government, a situation that defeats the move.
In 2017, the government placed a two-year ban on all small-scale mining activities in the country in order to weed out the illicit ones.
The government also wanted to properly streamline the operation of the legal ones as a way of saving the water bodies and the environment.
Subsequently, a task force, Operation Vanguard, was set up to help combat the miscreants who were still engaging in the practice.
Speaking in an interview with Johnnie Hughes on the New Day programme on TV3 Thursday, November 26, Mr. Worlasime emphasized that the government has lost the fight against galamsey given the way and manner it was done.
“As a country, we pretend to fight corruption and forming ad hoc task force has been our style for fighting corruption. Forming taskforce all over to fight galamsey is what our politicians do. We have been trying to fight it as long as it has been with us,” he said.
He added: “Small-scale mining sector is a sector that can throw in more money if we plan our policy and programmes very well. In this sector, people use wash plant. There can be a whole industry producing the wash plant, which will give quality jobs."
“There are institutions that are mandated to regulate this sector, it does not seem they do not have the legal framework and also there are best practices which we can learn from as Ghanaians."
“We should empower the state institutions in charge of the small-scale mining to put up resources and what it takes to achieve the goals that have been set in their policy guidelines.”
Some young men are picture here engaging in illegal mining (File photo)