Wacam to lobby for new mining law

Human rights and environmental advocacy NGO, Wacam, has said it will lobby for a new Minerals and Mining bill since the existing one has failed to adequately tackle the challenges facing the mining industry in the country.

The existing Mining Act, Act 703 of 2006 and PNDC Law 153 of 1986 has failed to address issues surrounding surface mining operations leading to pollution of rivers, displacement of mining communities, destruction of livelihoods, and abuse of human rights.

Wacam and its partners have, thus, initiated a campaign for mining law reforms and have launched a sample mining bill.

Speaking to Class News, the Associate Executive Director of Wacam, Hannah Owusu-Koranteng, said: “We will have to meet all the stakeholders and then lobby some of them. We are talking about parliament here, we are talking about government institutions, we are talking about even meeting people who work in the extractive sector because they also identify their problems with the law. … So, it is not only the NGOs that are seeing problems with the law but collectively we think as a state we need to have a holistic approach to make sure that we have a comprehensive law that will address the problems that we see in mining.”