The Ghana National Association of Small-scale Miners has expressed concern over the calls for a complete ban on all mining activities, arguing that such demands are unfair to them.
The small-scale miners reject accusations of being responsible for the destruction of forest reserves and water pollution linked to illegal mining, commonly referred to as galamsey.
General Secretary of the association, Godwin Armah, emphasized the need for a thorough examination and understanding of the implications of a total mining ban before any decisive measures are taken.
In an interview with Selorm Adonoo on The Big Issue, aired on Channel One TV and Citi FM, Armah contended that addressing galamsey effectively requires a nuanced understanding of the issues.
He noted that small-scale miners are not the primary contributors to the damage, as mining licenses are typically granted to large-scale mining companies rather than to small-scale operators.
“If you are calling for a total ban without understanding the underlying issues and looking at them brick by brick, we will not be able to resolve this issue. We realised after 2016 that illegal miners invaded AngloGold Ashanti’s concession and the small-scale association agreed and government placed a ban on small-scale mining to bring proper intervention into the space and the majority of us lost so much of our capital.
“If you are calling for a ban and you say small-scale miners who are not issued licenses in the forest reserves should be banned, I think that Ghanaians are not being fair to us. The licences in forest reserves are for large-scale mining so why are we not saying they should also be banned?”
“No small-scale miner is issued a license to operate in waterbodies and so you can see that there are floating dredges that are dredging around river bodies and causing siltation and increasing turbidity levels of the river bodies,” Godwin Armah added.
