According to the lawmaker, President Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo has only been playing lip service in the fight against the illegal small-scale mining menace that has rocked the country in recent years and it is time he hit the ground running with some tangible successes.
He explained that the president is only giving Ghanaians nice “soundbites rather than real action”, reports citinewsroom.com.
Sam George insisted that those behind the menace are people within the high echelons of politics or persons aligned to the governing New Patriotic Party, admonishing the president to crack the whip as a way of deterring others who might want to engage in it in the future.
“Mr. President, it is your party national executives and regional executives, your party people, your presidential staffers, your former ministers who are engaged in the galamsey menace. They are the people carrying out small-scale mining and destroying our water bodies. So, Mr. President, put your money where your mouth is. If you want to fight galamsey, deal with your own appointees and stop giving us soundbites and give us real action.
“The truth is that Mr. President, it is your party people who are doing the galamsey. Nobody in the NDC is engaged in it because we don’t control the security agencies that are protecting these illegal miners. We don’t manufacture excavators in this country, they all come through the port. So, who is giving permits for those excavators to be imported? If the government is really committed to fighting the menace, can’t the government place a ban on the importation of all excavators?” he stressed.
Sam George’s comments come on the back of the ongoing National Consultative Dialogue, a forum President Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo initiated, hopeful that the eventual roadmap to be developed from it will help it deal with the galamsey menace once and for all.
President Akufo-Addo stated that the event that, “Out of this maiden consultative dialogue, I hope we will build a national consensus around a national policy on small scale mining, that promotes a responsible, viable, environmentally sustainable small-scale mining industry, which has discarded the use of mercury, ‘changfangs’ and excavators, which has barred the involvement of foreign nationals, and which has rejected the destruction of our forests, environment and water bodies.”
Sam George is the MP for Ningo-Prampram