The Minister for Lands and Natural Resources Samuel Jinapor has charged the Regional Ministers Designate and Representatives of the President to lead government's effort in fighting the illegal mining phenomenon and permanently eliminating the practice in mining communities across the country.

At a consultative meeting with Regional Ministers Designate and Representatives of the President, the Minister expressed his commitment to work closely with the Regional Ministers in resolving the complicated problems in the Lands and Natural Resources sector such as illegal small scale mining, deforestation and encroachment on public lands.

"I want you to be the arrow heads and take the controlling lead for the implementation of the policies in this sector," he said.

He reminded the Regional Ministers of his Excellency the President’s call for a National Consultative dialogue on small scale mining adding that a Committee is being put in place to organize a National dialogue in this regard.

"We expect the Regional Ministers to be the anchor officials around which we will implement the policies and programmes agreed upon".

Today’s meeting was to enable the sector Minister obtain an initial input and proposal from the Regional Ministers and to charge them to do more to help improve the sector.

In the meantime, the Minister tasked the Regional Ministers Designate to take full charge and work with agencies under the Ministry to stamp out illegality.

Present at the meeting were the Ministers Designate from Bono, Ahafo, Savannah, Western, Western North, Eastern, Oti, Upper West, Bono East,Upper East, North East and Volta Regions.

He indicated his resolve to make such interactions with various stakeholders a regular feature of the Ministry’s work with the view to building broad base support for government policy.