Ghana must stop treating illegal mining, popularly known as galamsey, as a political issue and begin handling it as a national crime, Paa Kwesi Schandorf, Media Relations Officer at the Ministry of Lands and Natural Resources, has said.
Speaking on Joy Prime, Schandorf argued that the continued politicisation of the galamsey fight is making it difficult for the country to make meaningful progress.
“We need to first of all de-escalate the politics that continuously animates the whole conversation and come to a place where we begin to now treat galamsey like the way we handle armed robbery,” he said.
According to him, armed robbery has existed in Ghana for decades, but the country generally treats it as a criminal matter rather than attaching political considerations to individual cases.
“Hardly would you see anybody assigning any political undertones to incidents of armed robbery. We all treat it as a national transgression,” he said.
Schandorf believes the same approach should be applied to illegal mining, particularly because of the environmental damage associated with the practice.
He said the fight must also move beyond the Ministry of Lands and Natural Resources and become a national responsibility involving government agencies, political parties, local communities and ordinary citizens.
“If we don’t and we are continuously politicising the issue and involving the regular political discourse, we will not get anywhere,” he said.
He called for both sides of Ghana’s political divide to acknowledge their role in politicising the issue and agree to treat galamsey as a national problem.
“Whether party A does it first or party B does it first, we should come to that point of honesty,” he said.
Schandorf warned that the country could reach a point where the effects of illegal mining become too difficult to contain if the current approach does not change.
“Already, we have a very serious situation on our hands, but we might get to a point where nobody will be able to contain it again,” he said.
