The so-called war against illegal mining aka galamsey has taken an unpalatable turn.
Last week a country troubled by the most destructive ecological activity in her history was inflicted yet again by a pain which exposed the government’s hypocrisy on her promise of eliminating galamsey.
One of the ruling party’s face of propaganda, Sammy Gyamfi, GoldBod Chief Executive, who told the country ahead of the 2024 elections that the NDC when given the mandate would deal a death blow to galamsey and quickly so, gave a carte blanche to illegal miners to go out on the land and mine provided the occupation excludes forests and water bodies.
Of course galamsey activists have cause to shower plaudits on a government which promised to release from prison persons arrested for engaging in the illegal activities. In fact Sammy Gyamfi added that no licences are needed to undertake mining activities by the small scale prospectors. There is no better for the galamsey operators across the country. For them it is a dream come true.
It is instructive that the head of the NAIMOS, the military deployment to arrest illegal mining in the country had announced a few days before Sammy Gyamfi’s bombshell that the war against galamsey was being won. That is a palpable lie from the Colonel who should have known better the dangers in descending into the gutters of NDC propaganda.
Without proof of such triumph and against the now predictable heightened galamsey operations in the country the NAIMOS Chief should know that his terms of reference could not have been better defined by the most irresponsible announcement yet on illegal mining in the country.
Illegal miners should no longer be described as such provided they restrict their activities to any other place but forest reserves and water bodies.
The GoldBod CEO’s good news to illegal miners is certainly a policy reversal, a subtle one at that, on the part of government on galamsey and it adds to the already entrenched impression that the President and his team are playing on the intelligence of Ghanaians as they pretend to be fighting the ecological destruction.
During his engagement with the media at the Jubilee House the President told his guests that it would be better to have Ghanaians engage in illegal mining to foreigners doing so. It was such a clear message that there is no appetite to implement the pre-election promise of fighting the illegal mining of our forests and water bodies. We can bet our last Cedi that illegal mining on water bodies and forests has been given an unusual boost.
Just how illegal miners would adhere to their new limits of mining is anybody’s guess at this time.
A GoldBod which depends on galamseyers for most of its gold purchase could not have given a better deal to this critical source of the precious metal even if that is at a cost to the nation’s health. Ghana is screwed up.
