Small-scale mining is not all about pollution – General Secretary, GNASSM

General Secretary of the Ghana National Association of Small-scale Miners (GNASSM), Godwin Amarh, has clarified that small-scale mining is not all about pollution as people usually perceive.

In an interview with Samuel Eshun on eTV Ghana’s Fact Sheet show, he noted that there are processes that miners can go by to ensure that they are not polluting water bodies and a lot of small-scale miners follow these procedures respectfully.

“When it comes from underground, those who go underground to mine the minerals most often use a very limited quantity of water because they bring the rock out, dry it and then it goes through the mill to be crushed so those who go underground don’t have much of a problem in terms of the quantity of water that they use”, he explained.

Godwin stated that it is with alluvial mining that the miners require a lot of waters in carrying out their processing, however, even with that, he cleared that they do recycle the water, hence, the only time when they need to get more water is when there is evaporation and the water level reduces.

“We also have the slimeholes where we take all the slime and discharge, and then continue to recycle. In that case, you don’t pollute the river but some of the miners are not doing it”. He confessed that some miners, instead of following these proposed ways, discharge the water directly into the water and they are the reason why the issue of mining activities destroying water bodies still prevails.