The Minority Leader in Parliament, Alexander Afenyo-Markin, has stated that winning the fight against illegal mining (galamsey) will require shelving political colours for the national cause.
He said the politicisation of the galamsey fight and complicity of some traditional authorities were largely responsible for the unending environmental crime.
Mr Afenyo-Markin, who is also the Member of Parliament (MP) for Effutu in the Central Region, said the continuous framing of the galamsey discourse along partisan lines by the National Democratic Congress (NDC) and the New Patriotic Party (NPP), in particular, needed to stop and give way to collaboration to tackle the menace.
“The fight against galamsey goes beyond the NPP and NDC arguments. As a nation, we need a whole national orientation on this issue. Frankly speaking, I think we have all failed our nation; we have to let the authorities know that we have no other alternatives; this must stop,” he stressed.
IEA seminar
The Effutu MP was speaking at the seminar series of the Institute of Economic Affairs (IEA) on the review of Ghana’s natural resources management regime in Accra last Tuesday.
The Dean of the University for Professional Studies, Accra (UPSA) Law School, Professor Ernest Kofi Abotsi, was the keynote speaker on the topic: “The ideal mining and mineral rights for effective natural resources management in Ghana”.
Notable personalities at the seminar were the former Speaker of Parliament, Prof. Aaron Mike Oquaye; a former Chief Justice, Sophia Akuffo; a former member of the Council of State, Sam Okudzeto; the Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of the Ghana Chamber of Mines, Dr Kenneth Ashigbey, and a former CEO of the Environmental Protection Authority (EPA), Dr Henry Kwabena Kokofu.
Commitment
The Minority Leader said that, given that galamsey had become a national development challenge that affected everyone, all stakeholders must play their part to combat it.
In that regard, he said, when Parliament reconvened later this year, he would support every discourse and policy intervention that would help stem the galamsey tide.
Bold reforms
For his part, Prof. Oquaye said there was an urgent need for the country to take bold steps by implementing policies and reforms that would promote local ownership of natural resources.
Making a biblical allusion, he said, if God could work through Moses’ staff to give the Israelites superior power to overcome the might of the Egyptians, Ghana could also use its abundant natural resource endowment for economic development.
“Even when Moses was sent on that big mission against Egypt, Moses asked how he could accomplish that big task, and God asked what he had in his hands.
With the power of that stick Moses had in his hands, God made him succeed.
“What Ghana has in its hands now is the power of our natural resources, such as gold, diamond, bauxite, manganese and lithium, and we must be able to maximise the use of these resources for national development,” Prof. Oquaye, who is also a Minister of the Gospel, stressed.
He emphasised the importance of revitalising the mining sector in a way that guarantees institutional capacity building, reforms of unfavourable mining regimes, and the adoption of technology.
“If we are doing something wrong, we must stop it. If our institutional arrangements are weak, we must strengthen them,” he said.
The former Speaker of Parliament said the country” will not go to the International Monetary Fund for the 18th time” when resources were properly deployed, such as by paying attention to the mining sector.
