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Stakeholders in the mining sector from Ashanti, Bono and Ahafo Regions have attended a forum aimed at ensuring responsible mining across the country.
The forum, which formed part of the Wacam’s agenda of pushing strongly for mining responsibly in the country, was also aimed at examining the effectiveness of Ghana’s mining campaigns in fighting the mining menace.
It also looked critically at the gaps in the legal and regulatory framework governing the mining sector and made recommendations to the state how to maximise the benefits of mining while minimising its adverse effects
Organised by Wacam, a civil society organisation, and its partners, Oxfam in Ghana and OSIWA, on Thursday, December 8, 2022, in Sunyani in the Ahafo Region, the participants, who included representatives of regulatory bodies, security agencies and locals in communities affected by mining, were taken through topics such as examining the effectiveness of responsible mining, policy brief on the mining sector and achieving responsible mining in Ghana, the way forward.
Welcoming participants, the Associate Executive Director of Wacam, Mrs. Hannah Owusu-Koranteng, said despite her rich mineral resources, Ghana continues to record conflicts in the extractive sector.
She went on to state that mining was seriously affecting agriculture and free education, adding that there continues to be reports of teachers dying in abandoned pits while pupils and students in mining communities actively engage in one form of mining and the other.
She warned that if “our mineral resources are not well managed, it will spell doom for the country, stressing that the benchmark should be responsible mining to ensure peace.
In this regard, Mrs. Owusu-Koranteng called on the participants to come out with workable recommendations on how to ensure responsible mining to inure to the benefit of Ghanaians.
On the effectiveness of responsible mining policies, the Financial Director of the Association of Small Scale Miners (ASSM), Francis Opoku, charged civil society organisations to boldly speak out on what he described as ‘political galamsey’ which involves politicians using their connections at the top to acquire permits for mining purposes.
And while commending Wacam and its partners for the event, he underpinned that any type of mining that brings “devastation and destruction should not be entertained.”
According to him, his outfit was doing its best to ensure sanity in the mining space, urging regulatory agencies to up their game.
Addressing the participants, the Executive Director of Wacam, Mr. Daniel Owusu-Koranteng, said there was no denying the fact that mining has brought the country loads of problems, hence called on mining companies to respect the basic principles of business.
He intimated that irresponsible mining was not only about galamsey but also the multinationals were culpable too.
He however, took a swipe at the security agencies, especially the police, who he said were always quick to drift towards corporate power at the detriment of residents in mining communities, during conflicts.
This, he indicated, does not bode well for peace in mining communities, admonishing Ghanaians to take decisions that will protect the mineral resources of this country.
For his part, a Mines Inspector at the Minerals Commission, Felix Baiden Amissah, said Ghana’s mining sector was one of the heavily regulated industries in the world.
This, he said, included proactive measures to deal with illegalities too.
According to him, the Commission has adopted several measures which have led to the arrest and repatriation of several Chinese illegal miners.
However, he said it was sad that those Chinese illegal miners often find their way back into the country.
Again, as part of clamping down on irresponsible mining, the Mines Inspector stated that the Minerals Commission has purchased drones and speed boats all in an effort to arrest illegal miners and tackle the menace.
Other measures, he mentioned, include offering training workshops for small scale miners on the need to be responsible in their operations.
Mr. Baiden Amissah strongly advocated that measures be put in place to extract gold in a safe, humane and responsible manner.
There were presentations on “The Role of Mine Land Reclamation in Combating Environmental Impact Mining in Ghana, by Paul K. Nsiah (PHD), of the University of Energy and Natural Resources (UENR), and also a Policy Brief on the Mining Sector of Ghana by Lawyer Augustine Niber of Centre for Public Interest Law (CEPIL).
At the end of the forum, the participants made recommendations to the state on how to effectively ensure responsible mining.
These recommendations were the need for the state or the mining companies to bear the legal fees of community members; a provision for the district and circuit courts to handle mining-related cases instead of sending these matters straight to the high court, and making Free Prior Informed Consent (FPIC) a part of the Mining and Minerals Act.
The rest were payment of compensations should done in installments instead of lump sums; community members should negotiate on the health aspect, and the need to decouple the Inspectorate Division from the Minerals Commission.
