Knee-jeck and Ad-Hoc. This galamsey fight will also end in a no-show

A retired army officer, colonel Festus Aboagye, using his vast knowledge and experience, said it all on Alfred Ocansey's Key Points program. If the military would be anywhere successful in combating galamsey, we will need about 5 to 6 batalions. We will also need a heavy logistical base that will include vehicles, fuel, food, and medicines, among other stuff. The soldiers will have to set up temporal base camps to prevent the return of illegal miners and also to provide security cover for reclamation exercise, etc etc etc etc

First of all, the latest edition of operation-stop-galamsey has started on a wrong footing. Indeed, every Ghanaian of reading age and of minimum degree of understanding of current affairs discourse will have known that to send 100+ soldiers to vast areas of devastation that are scattered across many geographic locations in the country is nothing more than a joke, woefully inadequate to start with. And to think that a whole governing machinery will not know this is simply sacrilege.

A more tangible approach to this latest galamsey fight was for authorities to have heeded to calls from experts and the masses alike for a proclamation of state of emergency. This is followed by an initial order for all surface and / or alluvial mining to seize for the time being. Constitutional experts say this wouldn't need a parliamentary recall, but even if that was necessary, the seriousness of the current situation would've necessitated that quick parliament recall to happen.

Then, within all these times that public agitation had already kicked in, one would've thought the government was behind the scenes, planning a well-thoughtthrough way out of this mess.

Simple Method Statement

1. Map out areas where there's live galamsey activities going on.
2. Secure police and military manpower strength needed for combating galamsey
3. For this, no logistics spared. Get the military and the police logistically ready( food, medicines, vehicles, helicopters, drones, temporal accommodation in cabins, etc etc
4. Now official statements, announcements ordering all miners in certain specific areas to seize operations and evacuate sites.( A timeline of, say, 1 week be given for equipment to be removed from sites to storage ponds)
5. Now, a deployment of thousands of police and military would be activated to go chase out refuseniks or the stubborn brigade. Arrest and prosecute(no _shoot-to-kill_ on-site nonsense) unless the foolish ones try to engage state troops in gunfights.

Such should be the scope of activities. For now, we can only describe the efforts by these few soldiers as adhoc, and clearly, this isn't enough. Thanks for reading. Please share.