Decentralize Galamsey Fight To Achieve Better Results - Small Scale miners to Government

Small Scale Miners Association is asking government to decentralize the fight against illegal mining to include other stakeholders. According to the association, that will help sustain the fight against the menace. Their call comes on the back of the recent deployment of the 200 military personnel to flush out illegal miners destroying the water bodies in the country. The directive is also the

outcome of a recent stakeholders’ dialogue on the the small scale mining. A statement from the Information Ministry said, In furtherance of the resolution of the final communiqué of the Stakeholder Dialogue on the 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, Akufo Addo has authorized

the Ghana Armed Forces to commence an operation to remove all the persons and logistics involved in mining from Ghana’s water bodies. The operation commenced at 0600 hours on the Wednesday, April 28, 2021, on the River Pra in the Central and Western Regions of Ghana. Two Hundred (200) officers of the Ghana Armed Forces are involved in the operation,” the statement added. The

General Secretary of Small Scale Miners Association, Godwin Armah, 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 and 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 all their operation and leave, who will sustain all the efforts and that is what we also need to look at because when the soldiers leave, the illegal miners will come back again.