The Wassa Association of Communities Affected by Mining (WACAM), a mining sector pressure group has advised government to create employment avenues to absorb the affected illegal miners for a more sustained fight against galamsey.
The Minister for Lands and Natural Resources, John Peter Amewu has said security forces will subsequently be deployed to the illegal mining sites to ensure the miners do not return.
The three weeks ultimatum to illegal miners expired Wednesday, April 19, 2017.
But Small scale miners, especially operators of galamsey activities are reluctant giving up completely on these activities as they complain this threatens livelihoods given that hundreds of Ghanaians eke out a living out of small scale mining.
Thousands of youth are involved in the illegal mining activities, according to WACAM and merely sacking them from the site will not permanently keep them away.
“There are youth who have gone through Secondary School who may have found their way in there. They may continue their education. There are those who were there because they are not employed. Now with government policy intervention, I’m expecting that they should have these labour and then categorize the various forms of labour in there so that they could be used meaningfully.
“Even for the reclamation of the destroyed environment, some of these people can be used for such work. So there are various options available to government, “Associate Executive Director of WACAM, Mrs. Hannah Owusu-Koranteng argued.
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