Member of Parliament for Obuasi East, Dr Patrick Boakye-Yiadom has commended the media for championing the fight against galamsey in the country which he says has yielded some good results.
Coming from a mining community, the MP said several people who have been involved in galamsey activities for years have nothing to show for risking their lives in search for gold.
Several lives, farmlands, forest reserves and even homes have been lost to this illegal activity which has been gaining grounds in most mining communities with many water bodies being destroyed in the act.
The Media Coalition Against Illegal Mining earlier this year launched a campaign against galamsey activities in the country and earned the support of government and other corporate institutions.
The government imposed a six-month ban on small-scale mining as part of efforts to end illegal mining and its related activities.
A few days ago, Minister for Lands and Natural resources, John Peter Amewu announced an extension of the ban by three months.
He said, “There is an extension for three months, and the Association has been informed. The people we are dealing with are aware. The ban has been extended. This was supposed to end somewhere in October”.
The sector minister, John Peter Amewu, during a tour of some reclamation projects at Kyebi in the Eastern Region, said government has set up a committee to monitor development in the sector before its five-year Multilateral Mining Integrated Project (MMIP) would be implemented.
Dr Boakye-Yiadom lauded the government’s plans to validate and supervise the activities of all small-scale miners noting that “that is good because we can also formalise them so that they will be able to pay some tax to government and we’ll make sure that they do the small-scale mining according to standard”.
