The government has announced a number of support programs targeted at deepening support for former illegal small-scale gold miners through the enhanced Alternative Livelihood Program and Community Mining Initiatives.
Minister for Information, Kojo Oppong Nkrumah who disclosed this at a press briefing in Bolgatanga in the Upper East Region said these programs are to provide support for former illegal small scale miners who were affected by Government’s ban on small scale mining in 2017 and to ensure that the participants benefit from the God-given resources but do not risk lives nor damage the environment.
“For those who want to remain in mining but do it legally, government has introduced the Community Mining concept through which former illegal small scale miners are properly registered, trained, given concessions to jointly work on and properly tracked to ensure they mine responsibly. About 4500 miners have so far been trained while some have already been accredited,” he said.
According to the Minister, Government has also rolled out the Alternative Livelihood Program which seeks to train those who are no longer interested in mining to work in other economic sectors.
The training covers skills such as oil palm farming, others are also being trained by Local Government Ministry in the areas of tailoring & dressmaking, welding and metal fabrications, plumbing & carpentry.
“The expectation of government is that these interventions will ensure that former miners remain economically engaged even as the battle against illegal small scale mining remains in gear” Mr. Nkrumah added.
Citi FM led a campaign spanning many months with a petition to Parliament to demand among other things that the mining sector be sanitized.
The government, in taking action on the campaign constituted a joint police and military taskforce called Operation Vanguard, which was tasked to arrest and ensure prosecution of illegal small-scale miners in the country.
While some arrests were made, rumours were rife that the task force has been in the business of taking bribes and leaving out illegal-small scale miners, but the taskforce’s commanders denied those claims insisting that the major problem with their work was the slow pace of prosecution and the lenient sanctions imposed on persons prosecuted.
The government has turned to the use of other different measures in its quest to end illegal mining in the country and sanitize the sector.
It announced that it had introduced a software known as ‘Galamstop‘ to monitor mining concessions and the owners of the small-scale mining companies.
