Mining communities decry use of Minerals Development Fund

Despite a large mining sector and a well-structured mineral revenue distribution system, mining affected communities are among the poorest in Ghana. In order to accelerate and promote socio-economic development in these mining affected communities, Ghana’s Parliament passed the Minerals Development Fund Act in 2016.

The Act, among others, seeks to address existing challenges in the allocation and utilization of mineral royalties in and its potential in promoting development in Ghana’s mining affected communities.

However, it has emerged that the Act has not achieved the very purpose for which it was established as the intended beneficiary communities are not involved in the utilization of monies accruing into the Fund, thereby raining issues about transparency and accountability.

A study conducted by Atuburoah (2019) to examine mining affected communities’ participation in the utilization of the Mineral Development Fund (MDF) has shown that most citizens of mining communities affected have no knowledge of the existence of this fund.

It is therefore anticipated that community members made little or no input on decisions about what projects that will be more beneficial to the communities and must be executed by Assemblies using the MDF.

To address the challenge, WACAM, a non-governmental organisation in partnership with Ford Foundation and the International Budget Partnership (IBP) is currently implementing a project aimed at promoting the participation of mining affected communities in the utilization of mineral revenues allocated to them.

At a stakeholders’ forum in Sunyani, some members of the mining communities drawn from the Tarkwa Nsuaem Municipality, Prestea Huni Valley and Asutifi North Districts raised red flags about their non-involvement by their respective assemblies in the decision-making process with respect to the utilization of the Mineral Development Fund.

According to them, most of the members of the communities have little or no knowledge of the existence of the Mineral Development Fund and therefore made no input on decisions about what projects that are essential to the affected communities.

The Associate Executive Director of WACAM, Mrs. Hannah Owusu Koranteng in her presentation on “Mining and Development” said over reliance on extractive sector as the process by which development can be realized without setting up required linkages will just drain the universe of its shared natural capital.

She said, revenues from valued natural resources such as oil and gas, gold, manganese, diamonds, and timber are an integral part of the national economy in many developing countries but the reverse is the situation in Ghana and a lot of other developing countries.

She noted that irresponsible mining has displaced many community people creating problems of landlessness and joblessness in affected communities, adding that this has further marginalized the people and led to food insecurity, breakdown of social systems and access to common resources and public service.

Throwing more light on his research work, Mr. Yaw Atuburoah said most community members who have knowledge about the MDF argued that they are not well involved in the decision-making process with the respect to the utilization of the fund.

According to him, his research has confirmed the statement made by Marfo et al, (2012) that decision on the use of the mineral revenues has been seized by the elite in the affected communities.

He therefore stressed the need for the Assemblies to engage the members of the mining affected communities in decision-making process in the utilization of the MDF.

In his submission, the Planning Officer of the Asutifi North District, James Ata-Era, said the Assemblies always make frantic effort to engage more community members, however resource constraint has limited their effort.

He revealed that there is no budget allocation in the mineral revenue fund for engagement, whilst community members also show no interest in town-hall meetings organized by the Assembly leading to low citizen’s participation.