Akim Swedru MP Kennedy Osei Nyarko has called for the temporary suspension of all small-scale mining operations in Ghana, arguing that the government’s current strategy against illegal mining, or galamsey, is unsustainable and ineffective.
His comments follow the recent violent confrontation between the National Anti-Illegal Mining Operations Secretariat (NAIMOS) task force and a mob allegedly led by two opposition MPs in the Ahafo Region, during which illegal miners were freed from police custody after their arrest.
Writing on Facebook, the NPP legislator said Ghana’s anti-galamsey fight was failing because of “the kind of approach we have been employing”, insisting that a radical policy reset was needed to restore order in the sector.
“The first solution to deal with this situation is to suspend all small-scale mining in the country and conduct site searches and mappings with a special code assigned to each site, which should be linked to a searchlight imaging system to give timely and accurate information on activities from each of these sites,” he wrote.
According to Mr Osei Nyarko, President Akufo-Addo’s earlier decision to suspend small-scale mining for 20 months during his first term was “a step in the right direction”, but the government “could not fully take advantage” of that opportunity to put in place the right technologies to sustain the gains made.
He argued that the current strategy – which relies heavily on security operations – was not cost-efficient or sustainable and urged the president to once again take bold action.
“If we want to succeed in this fight once and for all, then the President should be bold enough to put a temporary ban on all small-scale mining in the country for a minimum of six months and use that period to do site searches, inventory analysis, site mappings, and plotting, as well as implement searchlight imaging systems,” the MP proposed.
Mr Osei Nyarko said such a technological overhaul would enable authorities to monitor mining activities nationwide “at the click of a button”, helping to identify illegal operations in real time.
He cautioned that continuing with the current approach would yield no new results.
“We cannot use the same approach and expect different results,” he stressed.
The Akim Swedru MP’s remarks add to growing concerns over political interference and operational challenges facing the government’s anti-galamsey task forces, as highlighted in last weekend’s confrontation in the Ahafo Region.
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