Francis Doku, the Chief Operations Officer of Plugin Digital Limited has weighed in on how illegal mining popularly known as galamsey will affect Ghana’s tourism aspirations.

He said in an interview on Joy FM’s Showbiz A-Z that in a country that is working hard to position as a preferred tourism destination, anything that destroys the environment has ripple effects. 

“Eco-tourism is very important to people and they want to come in to places where they have access to clean water," he noted.

Francis said in countries like Kenya, there is a huge market for that eco-tourism because they pay particular attention to it.

“Because they have done proper conservation they can show the things they have in terms of the natural [resources] and all that,” he said.

He added that galamsey has the potential to ward of investors.

“Tourism thrives on investment. Last year, there was an investment summit at Peduase which the President addressed. There have been different conversations on how to attract investment into our tourism space. And all these conversations that are going on, investors sometimes are shy of things like 'how do we get our money back to invest in your economy, especially in tourism?'

Because of the bad press that we have had, a lot of people have asked questions about what is happening in Ghana. There is a way in my view that those investments will not come here so we cannot expand our tourism infrastructure because government cannot do everything,” he said.

He further noted that tourists are likely not to visit the country if they consider their healthy safety.

The host of the Africa Rising Podcast, therefore, called on the appropriate authorities to help fight 'galamsey' so Ghana does not suffer what he describes as 'Tourism Armageddon.'

The issue of illegal mining has become topical in recent times following reports of increased number of activities leading to it and the concomitant effects on the well-being of citizens.

A lot of individuals, pressure groups and organisations have advocated for a swift approach to rescuing the age-old situation before it gets out of hand.