Opinion › Feature Article       12.03.2019

The Struggle Against Galamsey Continues … Unabated!

As could have been expected, one of the lobbies that service the galamsey industry – which has destroyed so many of our rivers and streams and laid waste to so many acres of our food farms -- has been quick to seize on the Anas “revelations” on the work of the Inter-Ministerial Committee on Illegal Mining (IMCIM) to call on the Government to “dissolve” IMCIM!

But that will only happen in their dreams! For the elimination of galamsey is not a task allocated to any one individual, or committee, or even a group. It is a national movement that has grown out of a recognition that if serious steps are not taken to prevent the greed of nation-wreckers from destroying our water-bodies, Ghana will, in the near-future, cease to be a habitable country.

That fact is so starkly demonstrated by the “body-language” of rivers such as Ankobra, Offin, Tanoh, Birem, Oti, Prah and Densu that large numbers of Ghanaians cannot but, on seeing the muddy colour of allegedly potable water, feel incensed against the galamseyers.

But as in all other instances of greed among communities (many people think the Italians, for instance, as a nation, approve of the “Mafia”, but they don’t!), the galamseyers can’t see the hatred and contempt in which they are held in our society.

Anyone with the slightest amount of imagination and even the least awareness of what’s going on in the world today, would necessarily ask himself/herself: “They say there’s something called “global warming”, and indeed, we have noticed that the heat nowadays is sometimes totally unbearable. Even in a “cold country” like Britain, they report that the temperature reached a “record” 18 degrees Celsius in some places in February 2019! This was against the normal 6 or 8 degrees Celsius experienced at that time of the year! How much more heat, then, can we in the tropics expect in future years?”

To which another Ghanaian who is fully aware of matters, might interject: “Hmmm! Do you remember the bush fires of 1982-83 and 1983-84? How the disastrous water-level in the Akosombo Dam used to be prominently featured on the front pages of our newspapers? Some thought the bush fires were a one-off phenomenon. But they could return with a vengeance, couldn’t they?”

Now, if Nature itself is visibly “targeting” us already, how can we be so stupid as to engage in practices that destroy the very water-systems that we can see are being threatened by acts of Nature?­

When you are under attack, you defend yourself, don’t you? Rather than aid and abet your attacker, especially if he is as ruthless and inscrutable as the weather?!

But the galamseyers take us all for dumb asses. Otherwise, how could they have issued a statement that reads as follows:

QUOTE: Mar 3, 2019 Small-scale Miners Call For Scrapping Of Galamsey Task Force Committee

“Concerned Small Scale Miner (sic) Association of Ghana has called on President Nana Akufo Addo to, as a matter of agency (sic), dissolve the Inter-Ministerial Committee on Illegal Mining (IMCIM) and launch an investigation into their activities following the Anas tape exposé that captured some (sic)its members. According to them, the committee launched to monitor and regulate the activities of small scale mining to ensure sanity in the mining industry has been hit with fraud…. The Public Relations Officer (PRO) of the association, Stephen Arhin, who made the call during an interview… said the committee goes to the field purposely to extort money from the small-scale miners but not for monitoring….

“We have gone through the vetting process and have been given stickers, billboards and other materials indicating that we can go to our concession and mine, but none of us is working simply because we don’t have money to pay bribes… We have the capacity to supervise ourselves and do proper mining to ensure sanity in the mining industry so the government should give the support, that’s all we need.” UNQUOTE”.

The President should “launch an investigation”? Where were Mr Arhin & Co. when the Minister of Information, Mr Kojo Oppong Nkrumah, told the nation that the Government had asked for the raw, unedited tapes of the Anas report and would examine them to see whether any officials had indeed engaged in wrong-doing?

It is only to be expected that the system initiated by IMCIM, whereby documents have to be presented to IMCIM officials, by would-be legitimized small-scale miners, from the Ghana Revenue Authority, the Forestry Commission, the Mining Commission, the Ministry of the Environment and Scientific Innovation, and other bodies, should irk members of the association of concerned small-scale miners. But that is the price our society has to pay for the irresponsible mining that we have allowed to take place in the past.

The failures of one or two people cannot negate a whole system that has been carefully thought-out and been designed to make it difficult for cheats to “game” the system.

The system will be refined again, yes. Possible loopholes will be plugged. Those who honestly want to do things according to the law will be able to go about their legitimate business unhindered. There may be hitches, but that’s only to be expected of any system designed by man to be operated by man.

So what the Nation expects of all those involved in IMCIM’s work is a new sense of dedication; a reaffirmation that they do appreciate the important nature of the task allotted to them.

It isn’t only during war-time that the citizens of a nation are expected to defend their nation’s existence. Pestilence; famine; and drought can also pose an “existential” threat to a nation, and its citizens are then required to summon extraordinary physical and spiritual resources to combat the particular calamity it faces. Otherwise the nation cannot survive.

Our President knows this only too well. That’s why, in his most recent address to the nation (at Tamale on 6 March 2019), he took pains to reiterate his call to the Nation to unite behind the efforts to save and rehabilitate our rivers, forests and farms:

QUOTE….Being a Ghanaian must put certain responsibilities on each one of us; …calling yourself a Ghanaian must mean you have signed up to a certain definable code and conduct…

“IT MEANS ALSO THAT WE MUST LOOK AFTER THE LAND, THE TREES, THE RIVERS, THE MOUNTAINS, THE ANIMALS, ALL OF GOD’S CREATURES, THAT REPRESENT THIS NATION OF GHANA. THIS IS AT THE HEART OF THE FIGHT AGAINST GALAMSEY, TO WHICH I AM IRREVOCABLY COMMITTED”. UNQUOTE

So, those who thought that the temporary setback that has occurred at IMCIM in the struggle against galamsey means the end of the struggle, had better go and think again.

The struggle continues!
Unabated!
To the victorious end!
Which is precisely what our grand-children, and our great-grand-children -- born and unborn -- expect of us, as Ghanaians.

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