Media practitioner, Nana Aba Anamoah, has expressed her admiration for Vice President Dr. Mahamudu Bawumia’s strategy to tackle the illegal mining, locally known as galamsey, crisis.
The outspoken broadcaster in an X (formerly Twitter) post, described the NPP flagbearer’s solutions as the “most practical” she’s heard so far.
However, she was quick to add that she hopes Dr. Bawumia will actually implement his galamsey solutions if he wins the December 7 presidential election.
“I just listened to Dr. Bawumia’s remarks on galamsey. Glad he’s finally commented on the menace. His solution is the most practical one I’ve heard so far. I hope he walks the talk if he gets the mandate,” Nana Aba Anamoah wrote.
Dr. Mahamudu Bawumia recently outlined his approach to tackling galamsey at Kpone Katamanso during a campaign tour, emphasizing the need for a multi-faceted solution.
According to Dr. Bawumia, he will sanitize the small-scale mining sector by empowering the Geological Survey Authority to prospect for minerals and creating a resource pool of equipment to support sustainable mining practices.
“So one needs to look at the whole regime of small-scale mining and sanitise that regime, regularise the regime. Make sure that the Geological Survey Authority of Ghana does the mapping for where all the gold reserves are.
“At the moment people are just doing trial and error, destroying our environment. There is no data backing where they go. They just go and dig, they don’t find, they go to the next place and start digging. they don’t find, they go to the next place.
“But I want us to set up community mining schemes with certainty from the geological survey department that here you have gold. In that case, we can make sure that those who are mining there are regularised. We bring in these gold catcher machines that don’t use mercury and make sure they are not in water bodies.
“So we direct them and license them into areas so that they do responsible mining and environmentally sustainable mining.
“That is the way you stop this. But if you don’t regulate them then they will hide to do it at night and when they feel people are not watching them, that’s where they will go.
“They will get into the water bodies. But we need to regulate them and we need to also enforce the laws that are already existent,” he stated.
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