The Member of Parliament (MP) for the Tamale North constituency in the Northern Region, Alhassan Suhuyini. is skeptical about the government’s renewed fight against illegal mining in Ghana.
According to him, the government’s renewed commitment to tackling the menace is “structured to fail”.
His comments come on the back of the recent deployment of 200 military personnel to flush out illegal miners destroying water bodies in the country.
A statement from the Information Ministry said, “In furtherance of the resolution of the final communiqué of the Stakeholder Dialogue on Small Scale Mining on April 14 to April 15, and to ensure that mining within water bodies is immediately stopped; the President of the Republic, Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo has authorized the Ghana Armed Forces to commence an operation to remove all persons and logistics involved in mining from Ghana’s water bodies.”
“The operation commenced at 0600 hours on Wednesday, April 28, 2021, on the River Pra in the Central and Western Regions of Ghana. Two Hundred (200) officers of the Ghana Armed Forces are involved in the operation,” the statement added.
Speaking on Citi TV‘s Breakfast Daily show on Thursday, April 29, 2021, the Tamale North legislator said the government should have supported the regional and district security services to deal with the menace, rather than deploying military men to the mining sites.
“I think this new approach to fighting galamsey, with the deployment of the military, is structured to fail. I think the approach should use the regional security councils, the district security councils, and then when they require backup you give them the backup.”
“Let them deal with their operational needs, and then you [government] support from the centre [to help them] carry out these activities. This approach will give better results than repeating what we have always done in the past. I think that the president should have learnt some very good useful lessons from the first fight since he himself has admitted that the last four years has been a failure, given the amount of money that we have thrown at this fight.”
