Regional dialogue on galamsey will not solve the problem – Researcher

Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of CEBSAR-Africa and Doctoral researcher at Ruhr-Universität, Bochum-Germany, Albert Kobina-Mensah, has postulated that the Regional Consultative Dialogue on Small-Scale mining being held by the government is not the solution to the country’s galamsey problem.

In an interview with Samuel Eshun on the social and current affairs programme, Fact Sheet which is aired on eTV Ghana, he stated that the Regional dialogue itself is out of place firstly because the focus so far has not been on regions that engage mostly in the act as should have been the case.

Albert added that when it comes to issues of small-scale mining, there are root causes that perpetuate the illegality and if these are not tackled, any other measure taken against it will be in vain. The Regional Dialogues, according to him, has so far not been able to deal with this root cause.

The root cause of the illegal mining problem, he said, is that people who engage in small-scale mining are not driven by greed but by their survival and livelihood motive and this is what the government needs to first look at.

The researcher noted that when someone is driven by their livelihood and survival motive, that person does not pay attention to any environmental regulations because all they can think about is how to fill their stomach, hence, holding regional dialogues and enacting laws will in no way stop people from engaging in illegal mining because these measures do no provide them with alternative ways of surviving.