The Ghana Chamber of Mines has outdoored an action plan to help better regulate the activities of small scale miners especially the illegal ones. This includes a fund to support small scale mining, decentralization of the licensing requirements for small scale miners and fast-tracking the promulgation of the National Mining Policy. The action plan is part of the Chamber’s contribution to the National Mining Policy expected to come into force by the end of this year. The Chief Executive of the chamber, Dr. Toni Aubynn spoke to JOYBUSINESS at a meeting on the small scale mining sector. “It is not because we want to stop small scale mining. We rather insist there is the need to support it and infact we have had meetings with the Small scale miners association to support them. But illegal operations would however have to be discouraged” he said. But the Association of Small Scale Miners has expressed misgivings about the whole plan. Eric Cofie Rivers is the Secretary. “If its going to be implemented fully, it would benefit us but given the existing policy and the one under discussion, more efforts would have to be invested to get the desired results. Considering for example the planned target of legalizing about 1000 people within a specific period of time, there is no land for the regularization to be effectively done” he explained.