Ministry denies claims

The Ministry of Mines on Thursday denied that the government had authorised wholesale mining in the country's productive forests.

In a statement released in Accra, the Ministry said five mining companies, who on the basis of their forest entry permits were allowed to prospect for gold in some productive forests under very stringent conditions, had expressed interest for licences to mine about 24 per cent of the total area covered by their prospecting licences.

"The area under consideration translates to 0.2 per cent of the area of total productive forest reserves," the statement said. It said the government took note of the fact that the mining companies had the financial capacity and had demonstrated their ability to re-forest the degraded areas.

It said a ministerial and technical team that visited three of these sites noted that the forests in question had already been degraded. "Under the circumstances, Government decided to authorise the statutory agencies, that is, the EPA, Forestry Commission and Minerals Commission, which are mandated to review such mineral right applications, to receive and rigorously review them under existing as well as additionally imposed requirements using the criteria specified under the environmental guidelines for mining in productive forest reserves in Ghana."

The Ministry said additional requirements were imposed on the projects to ensure that, while the economic development potential of these mining projects are realised, the necessary conservation and re-forestation are also carried out.

These conditions are that only the mine openings and access are located within the forest reserve with all processing facilities and associated infrastructure is to be placed outside the forest reserve.

The mining company would reforest a degraded area at another location equal in size to the one to be exploited within the forest reserve prior to the mining activity.

The Ministry said such mines would be required to pay an extra 0.6 per cent royalty over and above what is paid by non-forest projects to support compliance monitoring and some sustainable development projects in affected areas.