The Co-Chair of the Ghana Extractive Industry Transparency Initiative (GHEITI), Dr Steve Manteaw, is calling on the state to provide the required budgetary resources for the fight against illegal mining (galamsey).

He said the country was only pretending to be fighting the menace because if indeed they were serious, funding would have been provided in the national budget to deal with the issue at hand.

Dr Manteaw who was addressing a Mining for Development forum in Tarkwa, said he had the opportunity of looking at successive national budgets from 2021, 2022, 2023 and 2024 and in all these financial statements, did not indicate any budget line for financing the fight against galamsey.

He reiterated that “In fact, at the local level, I did not also find any budget line for any assembly in galamsey endemic areas to fight the menace.

"I know how much it costs to evacuate one excavator and no assembly in this country can sustain the fight against galamsey on the back office, District Assembly Common Fund”.

Mr Sulemanu Koney, the Chief Executive Officer of the Ghana Chamber of Mines, stressed that, although illegal mining was a major issue, it could also be an opportunity to help address the country’s current unemployment situation.

That, he said, could be achieved by identifying those who were willing to mainstream into proper mining and then making sure they helped them.

“I propose a situation where we have co-regulation mining companies in that sector working with professionals who have been well trained and certified by regulators, such as the Environmental Protection Agency and Minerals Commission, so that they come to supervise the work being done by these small-scale miners,” he said.

Mr Koney said it would help formalise the small-scale miners and make sure that their brothers and sisters operated more responsibly, and sustainably, and secured decent jobs to be able to contribute meaningfully to the national economy.