Small Scale Miners Advice Government To Decentralize The Fight Against Galamsey
The Small-Scale Miners Association has advised the government to decentralize its battles against illegal mining to include other stakeholders to finally win the war against this practice.
The association explained that this will help sustain the fight against the menace. Their call comes on the back of the recent deployment of 200 military personnel to flush out illegal miners destroying water bodies in the country. The directive is the outcome of a recent stakeholders’ dialogue on small-scale mining.
A statement from the Ministry of Information said, “In furtherance of the resolution of the final communiqué of the Stakeholder Dialogue on Small Scale Mining on April 14 to April 15, and to ensure that mining within water bodies is immediately stopped; the President of the Republic, Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo has authorized the Ghana Armed Forces to commence an operation to remove all persons and logistics involved in mining from Ghana’s water bodies.”
General Secretary of the Small-Scale Miners Association, Godwin Armah, in an interview on Accra based Citi FM monitored by myactiveonline.com said a collaborative effort will deliver better results. Mr Armah insisted that decentralization of the fight is key in curbing the situation.
“The Regional Ministers are the representation of the government at the regional level. So when the government involves them together with various district heads, it will work. Then, it means the solution has been decentralized but we as an association and the communities that mining takes place also need to be involved more.
So we have it from the community level before it comes to the district to regional and then to national but deploying only 200 soldiers to flush illegal miners out, when they do their operation and leave, who will sustain the efforts and that is what we need to look at because when the soldiers leave, the illegal miners will come back,” he added.
By: Stella Annan | myactiveonline.com Twitter @activetvgh
