The Lands Minister-designate Samuel Abdulai Jinapor says President Akufo-Addo should be commended for his fight against illegal mining.

Speaking to Parliament's Appointment Committee during his vetting Wednesday, he said the President’s fight is "audacious" and "ambitious."

The former Deputy Chief of Staff alluded to a consistent concerted effort towards sanitising the environment and ridding it of the menace that has been going on for decades now.

“The President took it upon himself to try and bring some sanity and some regulation in the small-scale mining industry.

"Mr Chairman when the President said that he put his presidency on the line for the fight against 'galamsey', he meant it and indeed walked his talk."

"Even though he believed in the policy he implemented, he didn’t turn out to be popular with others and that is what he meant by putting his presidency on the line.”

The Damongo MP said since the fight against illegal mining started about 4000 small scale miners have been trained.

He added that other measures including community mining were put in place to ensure safe and secure mining processes.

"For those who want to remain in mining but do it legally, the community mining concept gives the chance for former illegal small scale miners to be properly registered, trained, given concessions to jointly work on and properly tracked to ensure they mine responsibly.

“I think what the president meant in his message on the state of the nation last year by a national conversation was that we have gotten to a point where we require a bipartisan, broad-based and multi-sectorial effort in dealing with illegal small scale mining.”

“The policy is to build a viable, sustainable, regulated small scale mining which has regard for the environment and do away with illegal small scale mining which degrades the environment,” Mr Jinapor said.

He called for support from all Ghanaians regardless of party affiliations to help fight galamsey stating that the NDC manifesto also toes the line of the NPP’s vision on fighting illegal mining.

Mr Jinapor said that when given the nod he will build on what the president has achieved in his first term.

He explained that he will work with already existing policies and review or perfect others to help the fight move forward.