If Just Arresting Miners and Burning Equipment Could End Illegal Mining....

Galamsey is not new. It is old. It has destroyed our rivers. It has destroyed our forests. It has killed farmlands.

If arresting young men in mining pits and setting excavators on fire could end illegal mining, then the menace would have ended long ago. This is the truth that every Ghanaian must face, because we have tried that approach for almost a decade and the problem is still with us.

Under the erstwhile Nana Akufo-Addo government, Ghana witnessed the most aggressive fight against illegal mining that this country had ever seen. Operation Vanguard was launched. Operation Halt was launched. Soldiers were deployed to river bodies. Hundreds of small-scale miners were arrested and paraded before cameras. Excavators were seized and burnt in the bush. Changfans that were used to mine in rivers were destroyed. The government even attempted to use drone technology and tracking devices to monitor mining sites.

But despite all of that effort, illegal mining did not end. In fact, while the excavators were burning on television, new ones were being imported through our ports. While the young men who held shovels in the pits were being arrested, the financiers who bought the excavators and the gold were walking freely in Accra. The water bodies that we were told had been cleared became brown again after a few weeks. The fight became a cycle because we were treating the symptoms while the root cause was left untouched.

The simple reason is that galamsey is not just about poverty. It is about a broken value chain that rewards illegality. The man who goes into the pit is often the poorest person in the chain. He is looking for daily bread. When he is arrested, another hungry young man takes his place the next morning because the sponsor still has his capital and still wants his gold. When you burn an excavator that costs over one million Ghana cedis, you have not punished the politician or the businessman who bought it. You have only made him angry, and he will buy two more to cover his loss.

Therefore, the thinking that we can solve galamsey by force alone is flawed. It is a thinking that looks tough on camera but is weak in results. If that strategy could work, the Akufo-Addo government, which applied it with full political will and military backing, would have ended galamsey by 2020. But it did not.

This is why the current John Dramani Mahama government must do something novel. While in opposition, the NDC told Ghanaians that the approach of the NPP government was not working. The party promised that it would bring a new, smarter and more sustainable way of fighting illegal mining. Now that the NDC is in government, Ghanaians are waiting to see that novel approach.

The new approach must be honest enough to admit that we cannot mine our way out of poverty by destroying the very rivers that give us water. The novel approach must start from licensing. When the system for acquiring a small-scale mining license is so cumbersome that it takes years and so much money that only the rich can afford it, then the poor will choose to mine illegally. If government makes legal mining easier than illegal mining, many young people will choose the legal path.

The novel approach must also separate the miner from the financier. Although it is easy to arrest the boy in the pit, it is harder but more effective to trace who bought his excavator and who buys his gold. If we can trace mobile money and bank transfers for other crimes, we can trace the money that finances galamsey. When the financiers know that their bank accounts can be frozen and that they can go to jail for ten years, they will stop investing in illegality.

Furthermore, the government must reclaim degraded lands and put them into productive use. Many communities that are engaged in illegal mining do so because their farmlands are gone. If government, through the Minerals Commission and the Forestry Commission, can reclaim these lands and give the youth alternative jobs like commercial farming, aquaculture and responsible small-scale mining under cooperatives, then the incentive to destroy rivers will reduce.

Finally, we must stop the politics in galamsey. Chiefs, DCEs, MPs and party executives who are involved in illegal mining must be named and punished regardless of which party they belong to. When a chief gives land for illegal mining or a politician protects a galamsey site because the boys there vote for him, he is part of the problem. If the Mahama government can show that it is ready to punish its own people who are involved, then Ghanaians will believe that this time the fight is real.

We have burnt enough excavators. We have arrested enough young men. The rivers are still brown. The forest reserves are still being destroyed. It is time for the current government to do what it promised while in opposition. It must do something novel, something smart, and something that attacks the root and not just the branches.

The author is an Information Officer with the Information Services Department.