The Chinese Embassy in Ghana has stated that the destruction caused by the illegal mining (galamsey) activities in the country must be blamed on Ghanaians and not Chinese nationals.
“The assertion that illegal mining is caused by Chinese is a
misconception because the root cause of the menace lies in Ghana, and so
any solution to it also lies in Ghana.”
The Deputy Chief of
Mission at the Chinese Embassy, Mr Zhu Jing, who stated this at a
round-table discussion organised by the Institute of Economic Affairs
(IEA) in Accra last Monday on the way forward to tackling the illegal
mining menace, said no Chinese national could engage in illegal mining
without local collaborators.
“Chinese illegal miners could not
have come all the way from China to Ghana without the facilitation,
support and shelter from local people, so Ghana is the root cause of the
problem,” he stressed.
Participants
Speakers
at the round-table discussion including the Convener of the Media
Coalition Against Galamsey, Mr Kenneth Ashigbey, a Professor at the
Mining and Engineering department of the University of Mines and
Technology (UMAT), Professor Sulemana Al-Hassan, had, in their
presentations, accused the Chinese for fueling the menace.
Prominent
personalities such as the Member of Parliament (MP) for Asutifi South
and former minister of Lands and Natural Resources, Mr Collins Dauda, a
former minister of state at the presidency in charge of public private
partnership, Dr Rashid Pelpuo, and the Member of Parliament for Klortey
Korle, Dr Zanetor Rawlings, were at the event.
The Chairman of
the Minerals Commission board, Mr S.K. Boafo and the Omanhene of the
Essikado Traditional Area, Nana Kobina Nketsia V, were among other
dignitaries at the event.
The crux
While
admitting that many Chinese had engaged in the illegality, Mr Jing
stressed that it was the responsibility of Ghana to crack down on both
foreign galamseyers and their local collaborators.
“Illegal
mining has caused terrible destruction to water and land in Ghana and
appropriate measures must be put in place to deal with it. I was posted
to Ghana about four months ago and after visiting some mining sites, I
was shocked by what I saw.”
“China is in a position to support
any move to uproot illegal mining and we expect the government of Ghana
to solve the issue according to the laws and regulations, and these must
not exclude Chinese illegal miners. We support that we should punish
Chinese illegal miners by using the law but we should not do so and
leave out their Ghanaian collaborators,” he stressed.
He added
that the Chinese had already started a repatriation process of some
illegal miners in a bid to maintain a good bilateral relationship with
Ghana.
“The Ghana-China relation goes beyond illegal mining because China is
investing in many sectors in this country including health care,
education, agriculture,” he said.
He observed that it was
important for Ghana to create employment opportunities for local people
who were being taken out of illegal mining to ensure that they did not
return to it.
Way forward
Mr Ashigbey
advocated that the way forward to tackling the galamsey menace required a
decentralisation of the licensing regime such that chiefs and the local
assemblies were put at the centre of the process.
He said the
fight against illegal mining must be made part of the yardstick for
measuring the performance of metropolitan, municipal and district chief
executive (MMDCEs).
“I am of the view that the commitment to
fight galamsey must be part of the performance of MMDCEs and the local
people must be involved in the management of their own the resources;
this is the way to go,” he said.
He urged the government to
ensure that the Multi-sectorial Mining Integrated Project (MMIP) that
was developed with a road map to pick up the pieces in the mining sector
was implemented to the latter.
Mr Ashigbey also called for state
institutions such as the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and the
Minerals Commission to be empowered and resourced with logistics and the
right human resource to help sanitise the mining sector at the grass
roots.
For his part, Prof.Sulemana stressed the need to decentralise the mining administration to make it more effective.
He said the over centralisation of the licensing regime in Ghana made the process too cumbersome.
He
also said it was important to make chiefs and MMDCEs a part of managing
mining activities to ensure that sanity returned to the sector.
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