Member of Parliament for Tamale North, Hon. Alhassan Suhuyini says, government has spent an amount of Gh¢11 Million on conferences which he says are not yielding any results in the fight against galamsey.
The Lawmaker who was speaking on TV3’s Saturday morning analytical show the Key Points, argued the earlier campaign of fighting against illegal mining that the government hyped somewhere in 2017 was botched.
He said, the rhetoric, only resulted in government wasting a lot of the taxpayers’ funds on a so-called fight that was nothing but a charade.
According to him, this renewal of commitment that involved mostly talk-shops and conferences across the country cost the Ghanaian taxpayer over GH¢11 million
“The conferences held in Accra, the Ashanti Region and other places just to talk about how to fight galamsey where the correct rhetoric and the platitudes were repeated cost GH¢11 million but there has really been no commitment.”
According to him, from the onset of the administration, there has not really been any political will or even commitment to fight against galamsey.
He said the campaign which was an initiative of media organizations against the impact of galamsey on the environment was abandoned by the government.
“The media houses came together to form a coalition and started pushing for the fight that suffered a hitch under the previous administration to resume and the NPP government took advantage of that media wave.”
“They used very nice and palatable things to feed the media campaign but were really never committed to fighting the menace and a lot of examples have shown…”
“…Zero in Aisha and you would realize that when she was arrested the media coalition that pushed the fight against galamsey were left dumbfounded when the senior minister gave a very frivolous reason for her deportation and questioned what Ghana will gain if she is prosecuted and that the state was going to get billions of dollars through Sinohydro, and we’re going to get our bauxite mined by that single decision to deport her.” he said.
He averred that the campaign failed woefully and when the government got another four years a new minister for natural resources began a supposed renewed commitment to fight against galamsey.
Mr. Suhuyini pointed out that in the end decisions were taken that included ban on permits and licenses to mining companies and yet it turned out a number of companies were issued permits even during the period of the ban.
source: theGhanaianvoice.com