The government is gradually losing momentum in the fight against illegal mining popularly known as galamsey.
This is according to a former Deputy Minister for Lands and Natural Resources, Kwabena Mintah Akandor, who has stated that the New Patriotic Party (NPP) government is not using the right approach to fighting the illegality.
He said the efforts of the new government to address the problem has not yielded any significant result.
The new government has intensified its efforts to rid the country of illegal mining which has devastated many communities in six regions of the country.
Most of Ghana’s fresh water bodies have become poisonous with thousands of acres of fertile farmlands destroyed as a result of the menace.
The government through the Ministry of Lands and Natural Resources as part of activities to stop the menace, has temporarily placed a ban on the issuance of licenses for small-scale mining, and directed all illegal miners to cease the practice and evacuate from the various sites.
The sector Minister also had a nationwide tour of some galamsey sites to inspect them for compliance with his directive. But according to the former deputy Lands Minister, Kwabena Akandor, government will not win the fight against the menace if it does not change its approach in dealing with it.
“Moving from one place to the other is not fighting galamsey, you are a minister, for how long can you be moving from one place to the other. For me, the approach is totally wrong. We don’t fight galamsey with ultimatums and jumping from one place to the other. We fight galamsey with laws,” he told Citi News.
The Juabeso legislator added that, “Now it looks as if nothing has even been done at all. The brouhaha over the whole thing has gone down. If you don’t put systems in place and you are jumping from one place to the other, you won’t do anything.”
The Ministry and other state agencies including the Police Service, have committed to ridding the country of illegal mining to ensure the country meets the Sustainable Development Goal 6, which seeks to ensure availability and sustainable management of water and sanitation for all.
Ghana risks not meeting the 2030 target of the SDG since the illegal mining has badly polluted most of its water bodies.
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