Former Chief Scribe for the governing New Patriotic Party (NPP) Kwabena Agyei Agyapong has noted that the fight against illegal mining known in local parlance as galamsey has failed.
He argues that one does not need a soothsayer to tell that the campaign to protect the various water bodies, as well as forest reserves, did not yield the expected results.
The Engineer was speaking on Ghana Television when he made this known.
“With mining, you can’t hide it because the results will show in the water bodies that we have. If there has been a success in the programmes that we have implemented you will see that in the quality of the freshwater bodies we have. As you can see it’s become very milky like milo as some people call it.
Again it’s how we impose order and discipline in the country. How do we hold state officials liable for any infractions? If you are there at the minerals commission you are supposed to do a job for this country.
It is quite clear that there are a lot of things that are wrong. Either the regulators are not working or a lot of people are not doing their work and people are not getting punished for not doing their work and that is what is supposed to stop. So we impose order, and a strong penalty regime so people realize that when they are caught they will suffer a proper penalty. I cannot understand why people will be given permits to go into our forest reserves,” he said.
