The strategy adopted by the Akufo-Addo government in the fight against illicit mining (galamsey) is not the best, Bernard Mornah, National Chairman of the People’s National Convention (PNC), has said.
According to him, the government has ordered that all small-scale mining activities be stopped at a time there is no alternative source of livelihood in place that the illegal miners can fall on to feed themselves and their families.
As part of the fight against galamsey, the Minister of Lands and Natural Resources, John Peter Amewu has revealed that about 400 earth-moving equipment have been voluntarily withdrawn from various illegal small-scale mining sites across the country, Minister of Lands and Natural Resources John Peter Amewu has revealed.
“We have had some reports that are quite encouraging, about voluntary withdrawal of some of the earth-moving equipment at the sites,” he said.
But speaking on the government’s war on galamsey in an interview on Accra News on Friday April 28, Mr Mornah said: “Small-scale mining has become a part of the lives of people living in mining communities, and so if you wake up one morning as a government to say you are stopping them from engaging in this business without sustaining their livelihoods or providing them with alternative source of living, then you will be creating problems instead.
“The question I ask is: ‘What does the government expect the people to feed on now that they have been asked to stop their business?’ Should they engage in armed robbery to feed themselves and their families? Is that what the government wants? I don’t think so and so there should have been measures to sustain their livelihoods before this action was taken.
He added: “The second issue has to do with how the government has lumped both the illegal small-scale miners and the licensed ones in the fight against the menace. That is a wrong approach because it was the ministry itself that gave them the licence to mine.”
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