One of the promises of the NDC while in opposition trenches was displaying loudly the wherewithal to stop illegal mining or galamsey within a fortnight of assuming power.
They made it look so simple…today they are in power and the narrative has changed. Stakeholders have been assembled to as it were brainstorm over the way out of the quagmire.
Bottom-line is that at the time they touted knowledge of what to do to stop the environmental menace they had nothing after all unbridled galamsey operation started during Maham’s first term presidency.
The cornerstone of addressing galamsey was ‘declaring a state of emergency’.
Last Friday the Presidency organized a stakeholders’ forum on illegal mining. Many wrote off the engagement as nothing worth taking serious and their reason is not farfetched.
Under the previous administration a similar engagement was held and the outcome, an important roadmap towards managing the menace has now gathered dust on the shelves of the Ministry of Lands and Natural Resources.
Public money was used to organise the engagement aside the time wasted. The recent conference on the same subject renders the previous one useless. Without doubt public funds were wasted for nothing.
Are we serious? Certainly not and the earlier we stopped re-inventing the wheel the better it would be for the public purse.
It is laughable that even the re-invented wheels are not going to yield anything productive.
We can bet the outcome of the latest engagement would be beautifully bound and placed side by side the previous one at the same ministry or on a new shelve at the Jubilee House.
The new word common in the lexicon of the youth of today is…setting….and it refers to gimmicks intended to direct the thinking of a public towards a desired direction. Put alternatively, propaganda.
With heightened pressure on government to do something about galamsey it has been decided to hold yet another forum to present the executives as doing something about the subject.
This is certainly not what we were told. We have discovered that government is altering the narrative without realising that the same people who were fed with the propaganda are now at the receiving end of the freshly packaged settings.
Friday declaration the declaration of a state of emergency as demanded by the NDC was appropriate. Indeed it was in their estimation the best response to addressing galamsey.
Today however it is not an antidote because according to the NDC it is would be counterproductive.
Declaring a state of emergency should be the last resort President John Mahama said during his engagement with the media recently.
The determination of the time to resort to such a declaration is in the bosom of the President.
The CSOs said all there was to tackle galamsey and so the rehashing of their suggestions during the Jubilee House was such an unnecessary exercise.
