The President of Ghana, Nana Addo Dankwa Akuffo Addo has asserted that, no institution or individual is above criticism in the fight against small scale mining known in local parlance as “galamsey”.
The President was addressing stakeholders to commence on a national dialogue on small scale mining being held by the government through the Ministry of lands and natural resources at the Accra International Conference Centre.
Even though, the government has made a lot of efforts to curb the menace in its first term by introducing a community mining scheme to train and regulate small scale mining, the deployment of the military through the “operation vanguard” and others, the menace of small scale mining still persists.
This dialogue, the President indicates, has therefore become necessary to enable all stakeholders including the Coalition for small scale miners, the minerals commission, chiefs and all citizens to come up with effective strategies to curb the ever-worsening small scale menace in the country.
The President has charged all those involved in the industry to speak up and stand against persons involved in any form of illegal mining activities and also charged the security service to be proactive in ensuring that the menace becomes a thing of the past in the country.
He also added that, even though small scale mining provides jobs and improves lives but all those should not be achieved to the detriment of the lands that provide those riches.
The President further implored the media to name, shame and also provide any evidence they gather on persons involved in illegal mining activities to be prosecuted.
Furthermore, President Nana Addo reassured that, he is not going to shield any government appointee found to be culpable of engaging in the illegality and also urged Ghanaians to criticize any institution or persons who appears lacklustre or inactive in the performance of their duties.
The dialogue is expected to last for two days after which recommendations would be made to the President through a report of the dialogue.
Content created and supplied by: GIMURIL_news (via Opera News )
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