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The Media Coalition against Galamsey has revealed that it will openly express its disgust at illegal mining activities, or galamsey, to the two front-runners for president, Dr. Mahamudu Bawumia of the New Patriotic Party (NPP) and John Dramani Mahama of the National Democratic Congress (NDC).
The coalition’s convener, Ing. Kenneth Ashigbey, emphasized that “the illegality of mining has nothing to do with the scale and again, when you played the labour statement, they called for a ban on all forms of mining around waterbodies and they did not say ban small-scale mining” in an interview with Selorm Adonoo on The Big Issue on Channel One TV and Citi FM.
In order to address the damage being done to the environment and water bodies, Ing Ashigbey further emphasized the coalition’s demands, saying that they do not include a ban on all mining activity but rather the declaration of a state of emergency and the implementation of Ghana’s mining regulations.
He said that the next step for the alliance will be to put pressure on the presidential candidates of the NDC and NPP to state their opposition to galamsey.
“The Media Coalition Against Galamsey is not calling for a ban. We are calling for a declaration of a state of emergency and enforcing the laws that we have. The NDC and the NPP sat in Parliament and passed LI 2462 and if you see the people who have been given these permits to go into the forest reserves, we are saying this LI should be revoked and it is the president who can revoke the LI by replacing it with a new LI and if you don’t do that, you will not be able to resolve the problem.
“To deal with the issue of politicisation, we are going to be calling on the current Vice President, and the former president [John Dramani Mahama], who is the presidential candidate for the National Democratic Congress (NDC), to also openly declare their revulsion for what is happening and their support for the crisis efforts.”
Source: Ghanatodayonline.com
