The Ghana National Association of Small Scale Miners is suggesting that the government formalise the medium and small scale mining sector in addition to the withdrawal of the military component of its anti-illegal mining taskforce, Operation Vanguard.
The association explained to Citi News that this will help ensure that medium and small scale miners adhere to an environmentally friendly regime.
The Director of Operations of the Ghana National Association of Small Scale Miners, Emmanuel Yerenkyi, suggested that the formalisation processes should begin immediately and must include local content participation.
“It is important that we recognise that apart from the legal framework that people are adhering to get licenses, they need to go through a certain phase because the investment is an important factor of formalisation.”
“Also, local participation to avoid social conflict or what we call gaining legitimacy in the business is important. Again taking people from illegality into a legal framework, I think it is a process that we need to be patient but be focused and know what we want to achieve so that we don’t necessarily take people out of job and businesses because the repercussions will even be higher,” he added.
The government is to begin the withdrawal of the military component of Operation Vanguard in March.
Citi News sources at the Inter-Ministerial Committee on Illegal Mining suggested that this is because, so far, over 1,000 small scale miners have been vetted and cleared to mine under environmentally friendly laws.