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The Director of Operations for Small Scale Miners Association of Ghana, Mr Emmanuel Yirenkyi Antwi, has expressed optimism in the release of the new policy to regularise small- scale mining in the country.
He told Kwame Tutu on Rainbow Radio 87.5FM that, the validation carried out by government will help clamp down on illegal miners.
He believes the new process adopted by government is a new initiative to monitor and sanitize mining especially small-scale mining activities.
He called for enough resources to allow the regulatory bodies work efficiently and effectively in monitoring the sector.
Mr Yirenkyi Antwi says because government has now validated and collected all their data, it will enhance the mining sector in the small-scale sector and fish out the bad nuts.
Information Minister Kojo Oppong Nkrumah has disclosed that government will on Friday December 14, 2018 release a new policy framework to regularise mining activities in Ghana.
Speaking at a press briefing in Takoradi yesterday, Mr Oppong Nkrumah said the policy framework would also look at the institutional reforms within the mining regulatory agencies, the legal reforms in the mining sector and efforts to avert a resurgence of illegal and irresponsible mining.
According to him, the new policy framework would set out the ground rules within which the more than 3,000 newly trained former galamsey operators and thousands more who were interested in mining could operate legally.
The policy will further disclose how validated and legal responsible miners are expected to mine after the release of the policy.
Commenting on the policy to be released, Mr Antwi said, the ban had serious financial implications for licensed miners and has prayed that the policy would also protect licensed small-scale miners in order to prevent any other future ban.
The activities of unlicensed miners he lamented gave the licensed ones a bad name and has expressed hope the validation will expose all the illegal miners so that ‘’we can target them and deal with them according to the law’’.
Meanwhile, the Secretary of the Inter-Ministerial Committee on Small-Scale Mining Mr Charles Bissiw, has said the current government after assuming office realised the mining sector was not properly regularised hence adopted a move to regularise, reform and sanitise the sector.
The committee he said has done a lot of work to help sanitise and reform the mining sector.
He told the host unlicensed people cannot be allowed to mine hence the move to form the committee to validate and regularise activities of small-scale miners.
