Galamsey fight wouldn’t be this difficult if Akufo-Addo’s gov’t did quarter of what Mahama is doing to fight it- Gyampo
Chief Executive Officer for the Shippers Authority, Prof. Ransford Gyampo, has insisted that if the previous government had put in a quarter of the efforts been put in by the current government, the fight against galamsey would have made headway.
He believes that the previous government failed in the fight and that has compounded the challenges of the current government in the fight against illegal mining, known popularly as galamsey.
Gyampo made this known in a post shared via social media on the fight against the menace.
Read His Post Below
GALAMSEY FIGHT
Data from the Ghana Mining Repository, has it that 40 licenses were issued from 1988-2008; 59 were issued from 2009 to 2016 and 2151 were issued from 2017 to the beginning of 2025 including the 55 licenses in the 2025 transition period. The 55 licenses issued in the transition period have been revoked by the John Mahama administration and over 900 more are being dealt with because of the irregularities surrounding their granting.
In the lead up to the 2024 elections, the then opposition party promised to repeal the law that the previous government passed to enable its unscrupulous cronies to go mine Ghana down in terms of our gold, while leaving dangerous ecological footprints for us all. Upon assumption of power the ruling government decided to tinker with this law to rid it off its undesirable provisions. But we were all not happy and demanded a total repeal of the law in line with the promise made. Today, we are told the government has acceded to this demand and in the next parliamentary session that law would be totally repealed
A very recent addition to the fight against galamsey is to declare all water bodies and forests as security zones. Under this initiative, security forces are to be stationed PERMANENTLY at the illegal mining sites to ward off and deal ruthlessly (within the confines of law) with all who are engaged in this dangerous war against humanity in Ghana.
These interventions are new and may hopefully yield some results. They may not be enough but if the previous government had done a quarter of them; if those attempting to hijack the fight against galamsey had not brazenly encouraged it; and if those who yesterday, insisted that galamsey shouldn’t be fought and openly defied the calls to deal with the menace had not done all they did, we wouldn’t have been where we are today.
The effectiveness of the current initiative of declaring all illegal mining sites as security zones is inter alia, contingent on the ruthlessness of the permanently stationed security forces in dealing with culprits regardless of their partisan coloration, nationality and social status. It is the expectation of all well meaning Ghanaians that this initiative would yield its intended results. While I still stand by my call for a state of emergency to be declared around the illegal mining areas, I also see the wisdom in the President’s position of allowing the new interventions to work and declaring the state of emergency as last resort, should his interventions fail.
Illegal mining was bad yesterday and it cannot be justified today. But those hypocrites making insincere noise about the menace today, must learn this: YOU DO NOT DEFECATE ON YOURSELF AND GET TO COMPLAIN WHEN SOMEONE IS CLEANING YOUR MESS.
Listen to Erastus Asare Donkor as he tells us about those who created the mess and are complaining about those cleaning same:
