Illegal mining or galamsey and its devastation can be stopped. The President with all the awesome powers of the State has lost the fight.

The patriot and accomplished surgeon – first to perform open-heart surgery in the country, Prof. Kwabena Frimpong Boateng is battling costly defamation suits for fighting galamsey.

In fact, he may face prosecution for corruption in relation to how his dissolved committee handled money and seized excavators, machines, vehicles and gold nuggets.

The Office of Special Prosecutor may also not win an aspect of the fight or easily for obvious reasons. A soldier has been killed in the pursuit. State officials paid to regulate mining are compromised.

Security officers sent to check galamsey end up offering protection or joining politicians, politically exposed persons and chiefs who are neck-deep in the illegal business; the business that is damaging our forests, destroying our farms and cocoa, poisoning our water and threatening our very existence.

It is only a small group of lawless, wicked and greedy people who are involved in destroying the population and posterity. Journalists and citizens who dare to blow the whistle on their crimes are endangered, and their media organisations have to pay legal fees fighting nuisance suits also known as SLAPP (strategic lawsuits against public participation).

But galamsey can be stopped. It has been stopped in the Bono Region. Berekum, Jaman North, Jaman South, Drobo, Dormaa just to help you locate the people who make us feel really proud.

I am talking more specifically about the true, bold and wise people of the communities in Gyapekrom, Nwenem, Asiri, Baabiaraneha and Adomesu. They have been united and victorious in the fight to the extent the Operation Vanguard taskforce never saw the need visit those areas.

Unfortunately, they even stopped licensed mining activities there because they know too well that much galamsey happens on so-called legal concessions.

Led by their chiefs and queen mothers and working with assemblymen, the locals have frustrated and prevented Symphony Limited, a registered large-scale mining company, from doing any work there since 2011. In fact, not even showing proof of valid prospecting licenses granted the company in 2016, got them to operate on any of their five concessions in these districts.

The company had to write complaining and seeking State intervention and protection to work. It informed authorities about how community leaders, especially particular assemblymen mobilized the people against their operations. They feared they will lose their livelihood – their farms, their cashew and cocoa farms. They used community radio and also went round announcing over loud speakers the dangers of galamsey and why it was important do everything, even if it meant bloodshed, to protect their lands from officials who sat in Accra and gave out concessions when they did not own any land there.

A chief who tried to convince the people to support the company got destooled. Things escalated forcing a curfew which was renewed in October 2019.

They never changed their position despite letters from the Minerals Commissions confirming the company had valid permits. Well, they needed more than that.

A Registrar of the Land Court in Tema, Sebastian Agbo, was recently dismissed for fraudulently preparing as many as thirty court orders. This was made public a day after the Supreme Court, speaking through Justice Jones Dotse in a unanimous judgment, indicted him and Justice Emmanuel Ankamah over suspected tampering and manipulation of court documents to give decision which the five-member panel quashed.

The court also fingered lawyer Maurice Ampaw for undervaluing properties of a dead wealthy Reverend Emmanuel Dorgbadzi to cheat the State in the amount of tax to pay. The court referred all of them to the Chief Justice for further investigations of what it described as a “sordid” affair and “shameful conduct” that cast a slur on the integrity of the judiciary. A careful study of the judgment seems to indicate that proper investigations may show an aspect of the finding of the court is faulty. But let those who must face prosecution be charged and not merely dismissed.

The State can show a far superior example in the galamsey fight. But we the people make the State and donate power to politicians to act for our welfare. Let communities emulate the people of Dormaa to unite against galamsey. That’s My Take.

Samson Lardy ANYENINI

June 17, 2023.