Executive Director of the Center for Social Impact Studies (CeSIS), a research and advocacy non-governmental organization, headquartered in Obuasi, focused on providing research backbone to Ghana’s extractive sector, Mr. Richard Ellimah has said Ghana has lost the fight against illegal galamsey launched by government in 2017.
Speaking with Bernard Avle on the Citi Breakfast Show, Monday, he said that the antecedence of history the country has on tackling Galamsey menace from at least 1979 shows that the country has only chalked temporal successes when it comes to fighting illegal small scale mining.
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“…It’s quite clear that we’ve lost the fight against illegal mining. We’ve lost it. I mean it’s very clear. I live in a place where I see what goes on and there’s nothing that can convince me that we have won that fight unless probably we can do something [practical] in the next few months” he said
According to him, We’ve chalked some successes in the current fight against Galamsey which are not unique because anytime [since the year 1979] there is a fight against it, temporary successes are chalked only for the destruction of water bodies to continue after sometime. This makes the success unsustainable he said.
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One of the things, Mr. Ellimah said have consistently caused the failure of such fights is how we go about it with the use of security forces like the military and police. He advised another strategy apart from the security forces be used as they will not be able to solve the problem saying “and again, we come back to the issue of will the use of the military be a sustainable approach to the problem of illegal mining? That clearly is a no. That answer is a no. So I will wish that we go back to the drawing board again and then find a more sustainable solution to the problem rather than these flashy, flashy fire fighting approach by bringing the military, they go to the sites, arrest the people and beat up people and then after a few weeks we get some temporary success and the military goes back to barracks and the problem starts all over again”.
Another issue he mentions that is the cause of the failure in fighting illegal small scale mining and their attendant problems is what he called “institutional confusion” brought about by the multiple agencies and bodies the current government set-up with all of them tasked with tackling and restructuring the Galamsey space.
“There is so much institutional confusion. We have the Ministry of Lands and Natural Resources that has overall responsibility for the mining sector, we have the Ministry of Environment, Science and Technology that as per the arrangements we have now, chairs the Inter-Ministerial Committee on Illegal mining…then we have GalamStop, we have Operation Vanguard. At the end of the day, you ask yourself, who does one report to? And who reports to you? So this whole institutional confusion is also a reason why we are losing…in the fight against illegal mining. I would have thought that we would stick to the institutions that have the core responsibility to deal with the illegal mining menace rather than to be creating additional bureaucracies that further creates more problems for us as we are seeing ” he said, adding that the addition of the GalamStop campaign added to the problem by becoming a problem instead of solving the problem it was intended to solve.
Speaking on issues concerning calls people, including political opponents are making around the president putting his presidency on the line with the issue of solving the Galamsey menace, he said that the president might not have understood the dynamics at play when it comes to the issue of Galamsey. According to him, there are powerful behind the Galamsey menace who are prepared to bring down anybody who makes an attempt to upset their interests. He was hopeful however that, if he president is to go back and understand he dynamics of the situation, hey can get the various interest holders, the fight against Galamsey can come back on track and chalk results in the next few months before the elections.
He went on to add that if Galamsey is well regulated, there could be a lot of benefits as researches they’ve conducted in some of theseareas shows that community members, usually those living with large scale mining would rather prefer small scale mining because they see it to have a direct positive impact on their economy whereas communities that do not have large scale mining but only small scale are totally in support of it save the destruction of the water bodies and all, again because of the boost it brings into their local economy advising that the big mining companies will thus need to have a stronger social touch with the communities the operate in.
