Gov’t alone cannot deal with galamsey – Collins Dauda

The Chairman of Parliament’s Select Committee on Lands and Natural Resources, Collins Dauda, says government alone cannot solve the issue of illegal mining, popularly called galamsey, and is therefore calling on all stakeholders to get on board.

“It’s something that you don’t leave it for the government alone to resolve. Government alone cannot solve galamsey issues in the country. Everybody must play a part. Unfortunately for government, unfortunately for us as a country, every key player you can think about is probably a part of it. So, it makes it very difficult to address it”, he said.

Mr. Collins Dauda, who is also the Member of Parliament of Asutifi South, was speaking to the media at Newmont Ahafo North project site after a two-day working visit for members of the Committee.

They were at Newmont Ahafo South mine and Newmont Ahafo North project at the instance of the Ghana Chamber of Mines to acquaint themselves with the company’s operations and learn, at first hand, key challenges militating against their smooth operations.

Touching on the role of parliament in dealing with illegal mining, Mr. Collins Dauda noted that the House will highlight the concern and issue a report on the matter to the sector minister to deal with it, explaining that: “Parliament doesn’t take that direct role. We make laws and the laws are to be used, help policy makers implement their policies….”

Permanent military deployment

The Asutifi South legislator suggested to the government to have permanent deployment of the military along the banks of rivers and in forest reserves, adding that: “The practice where anytime we hear about an illegal operation in Tano or Offin Forest Reserve, then we deploy a task force; they go in there for a number of days, they (illegal miners) hide when the task force leaves, they go back to the site. You can never resolve a problem this way. It’s based on this that I suggest that we can have a unit of the military to deal with this canker. If we can do it for a number of years, it will die completely, and we would protect our water bodies an protect our forest reserves.”

He described the visit as very beneficial as Members learnt more about how a mine company starts from scratch to operations, adding that: “Generally, I will say that members enjoyed the visit. We have learnt a lot, and it is going to impact on their performance in parliament.