Convenor of the Media Coalition Against Galamsey, Dr. Kenneth Ashigbey, has expressed concerns over the government’s response to illegal mining widely known as galamsey.
This follows the government’s deployment of police and military to crack down on illegal small-scale mining.
The decision was taken after a national security meeting to assess the impact of galamsey on river bodies and the environment after Organised Labour, religious groups, civil society organisations, etc called for a state of emergency to be declared as well as a total ban on illegal mining.
Dr Ashigbey stressed the need for a more comprehensive and aggressive approach, calling the current actions a “step too small” in the face of what he termed the “genocidal nature” of the environmental and social damage caused by galamsey.
In an interview on JoyNews’ The Pulse, he acknowledged the deployment of police and military forces but criticised the effort as inadequate, given the severity of the crisis.
“Well it is a beginning but it is a step too small. When you are in a crisis and you are hemorrhaging, we need a concerted effort and I think that this is rather a small effort,” he said.
“The effort that we need to see because of the genocidal nature of the crisis that we are in, I am not too sure that the effort we are seeing is commensurate with the crises confronting us,” he added.
He also raised doubts about the effectiveness of the Water Guard tasked with addressing the issue, particularly their ability to remove the changfangs (floating machines used for illegal mining) from water bodies.
Dr. Ashigbey suggested that merely burning the illegal equipment is not sufficient, as miners often rebuild and relocate.
Instead, he called for a more concerted effort, including policing communities where illegal mining is rampant, to address the root causes and the companies manufacturing the equipment used in galamsey operations.
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