The National Communications Officer of the Conventions Peoples Party (CPP) is calling for the fight against galamsey to be localized if the country intends to achieve success.
Several interventions against the menace have failed but Osei Kofi Acquah believes the only way to win the war is to localize it.
He attributes the failure of the fight to the formation of the interministerial taskforce without involving the people living around the galamsey areas.
“That is why we, the CPP, have decided that the only way to fight the galamsey menace is to introduce something called see something, say something.”
He said the local people in the small towns and villages where galamsey takes place should be made part of any intervention.
“This is where the government and national security diligently recruit certain people within that locality and make sure that they become police informants or whistleblowers whenever certain unknown people enter their forest reserves and water bodies to destroy it.” He noted.
“When this is done, the police are going to get accurate and first-hand information, which will lead to proper arrest.”
Mr. Acquah said the task force will always get to the sites but will not find the perpetrators, so the water and land will remain polluted and devastated.
He said CPP is not against all the demonstrations in Accra and the regional capitals like Kumasi.
“But the point is that we are speaking to authorities who do not live in the galamsey areas, and though they may mean well, there is little they can do.”. He explained.
He further stated that the government should add whistleblowers who live in the galamsey areas to the new interministerial taskforce to combat the menace.
“The whistleblowers should be resourced and given allowance to empower them to give proper, accurate information to the government”
“Because the galamseyers have hired rooms for people in the galamsey communities, to send information to them in the bush to aide their escape when the taskforce is coming to town.”