A Presidential Staffer cum Secretary to the Inter-Ministerial Committee on Illegal Mining, Charles Bissue, has revealed that some chiefs and traditional leaders have made an appeal to the government not to lift the ban on illegal mining in the country.
According to the Presidential Staffer the government is in a dilemma on whether to lift the illegal mining ban or continue to imposed it because the government is for the Chiefs and the small-scale miners as well.
Charles Bissue stated emphatically that some chiefs and traditional leaders have cried on the damages caused by the activities of small-scale illegal miners and therefore had called on the government to continue imposing the ban.
“Most of them are saying the ban shouldn’t be lifted now. The government sits in the middle. The government is a government to the chiefs and the small-scale miners as well, so we are sitting in the middle and we have to do, through the president, what is right for Ghanaians. So we have to listen to all of them.”
He continued that some of the Chiefs and traditional leaders have lost their land under their jurisdiction due to the activities of illegal mining popularly known as galamsey.
“The sentiments we’re getting from the chiefs is that, they feel that the illegal mining has cost a lot to their jurisdiction, and that if the ban is to be lifted at all, then the programmes should be outlined properly for them to be seen.”
He concluded that some of the traditional leaders have also made a passionate appeal to the government to involve them in any decision-making process to curtail illegal mining in the country.
The government placed a ban on small-scale mining in January 2017 for the period of six months following the widespread destruction of water bodies and forest reserves in the country.
In October, 2017 the ban was extended for the period of three months which ended in January, 2018 and had seen small-scale miners calling on the government to lift the ban.
