President John Mahama says the government has adopted a new strategy to prevent illegal miners from returning to forest reserves after they have been cleared of galamsey activities.

Under the new approach, military detachments will remain in reclaimed forest reserves to protect them from renewed encroachment, he said.

President Mahama explained that the decision followed the failure of the previous approach, under which cleared forest reserves were handed back to the Forestry Commission.

Speaking during his tour of the Upper East Region, he said illegal miners had repeatedly returned to some reserves after the military and other enforcement teams had cleared them.

“We are working; NAIMOS is working very hard. We’ve seized excavators, we’ve seized Changfan machines, and you drive them out of this area, they run to this other area. But we are making progress,” he said.

President Mahama said the government had so far cleared as many as possible of the nearly 49 forest reserves that had been invaded by illegal miners.

He said the government had, however, realised that simply handing the cleared reserves back to the Forestry Commission was not enough to prevent renewed illegal mining.

“Before, what we did was when we cleared, we handed over to the Forestry Services Commission. But they don’t fear the Forest Service; they go and drive the forest guards out, and they go back into the mine. And so now we put a military detachment,” he said.

Under the new arrangement, he said, soldiers would remain in the reserves after the illegal miners had been removed.

“After we’ve cleared the forest reserve, we leave a military detachment there. And that means we have to spend more money. One, you must feed the soldiers; you must provide them with the logistics to continue to stay there in the forest,” President Mahama said.

Despite the additional cost, the President said his government would remain committed to the fight against illegal mining.

“But we will not give up; we will continue the fight against illegal mining,” he said.

Government targets formalisation of mining

While stressing the need to curb illegal mining, President Mahama said the government also recognised the potential of the mining sector to create jobs for young people in the Upper East Region and elsewhere.

He said the government’s objective was to formalise mining activities to improve regulation and create sustainable employment opportunities.

“Upper East has good potential, and mining can create jobs, but we need to make sure that these are formalised mines so that they can employ our young people to operate,” he said.

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President Mahama cited the opening of Cardinal Mine in the region as an example of how formal mining operations could contribute to job creation.

He also pointed to the Black Volta mine development in the Upper West Region as another example of the potential for properly regulated mining to create employment.

“In Upper West, they have the Black Volta mine development coming up. There are several other areas that we can see the potential for proper mining so that it can produce more jobs for our young people,” he said.

He stressed that the government’s goal was to formalise mining and establish greater control over the sector rather than allow unregulated and scattered illegal mining activities to continue.

“Our target is to formalise the mining activity so that we have greater control over it than the current scattered illegal mining that takes place,” President Mahama said.

Mahama distinguishes Upper East mining from forest destruction

President Mahama also drew a distinction between mining activities in the Upper East Region and the environmental damage associated with illegal mining in forested areas in southern Ghana.

According to him, much of the gold in the Upper East Region is found in rock formations, which means mining there does not cause the same level of environmental destruction associated with mining in forest reserves in the south.

“The advantage with the Upper East Region is that most of the places where the gold is found are found in rock. And so it does not create the kind of environmental destruction that we see in the south,” he said.

He explained that mining in such areas involves blasting rock and processing it to extract the gold.

“The gold is found in rock, and so they blast the rock, and they process it and take the gold out,” he said.

President Mahama said this meant the region did not experience the same extent of environmental devastation seen in forest reserves in southern Ghana.

“And so it doesn’t create the same extent of devastation that we’re seeing in the forest in the south. And so that’s a fortunate thing,” he said.

The government’s new strategy therefore represents a shift from simply removing illegal miners from forest reserves to maintaining a security presence in reclaimed areas to prevent their return, while pursuing the formalisation of mining activities outside protected areas.