Former Minister for Environment, Science, Technology and Innovation, Prof Kwabena Frimpong-Boateng, has claimed that some of Ghana’s polluted rivers began recovering following the erstwhile government’s clampdown on illegal mining between 2017 and 2018, but the safeguards introduced to sustain the gains were later abandoned.

He said sections of the Pra River ran clear for the first time in years during the moratorium on artisanal and small-scale mining, while fishermen reported catching fish in waters previously considered “dead”.

Prof Frimpong-Boateng made the remarks while delivering the keynote address at the Fourth Annual Colloquium of the Department of Political Science Education at the University of Education, Winneba, on Wednesday, September 2, 2026.

The event was held under the theme, “Politics, the Environment, and Our Future: Ghana at Crossroads?”

“That happened within about a year of the moratorium, and it tells you something no laboratory reading can: the rivers were not destroyed beyond recovery. They were recovering. We had proof of concept, and we let it go,” he said.

Prof Frimpong-Boateng, who chaired the Inter-Ministerial Committee on Illegal Mining, said Operation Vanguard, comprising 400 military and police personnel, was deployed to the Eastern, Ashanti and Western regions on July 31, 2017, to enforce the mining ban.

According to him, the intervention reduced the turbidity of water at affected intake points and lowered the cost of treating raw water.

However, he said the measurements were not maintained in a publicly accessible database or presented to Parliament through annual environmental audits.

Safeguards abandoned after mining ban

The former minister said the ban was lifted conditionally on December 21, 2018, after the government established several safeguards intended to regularise small-scale mining and prevent a return to illegal operations.

Under the arrangement, only miners with valid tax identification numbers and vetted, barcoded concessions were permitted to resume work.

Mining equipment was also required to be licensed and electronically tagged, while every company had to employ at least one person trained in sustainable mining by the University of Mines and Technology.

Operators were further required to reclaim 30 per cent of already-mined land within six months and complete the remaining reclamation within a year. They were also placed on six months’ probation and required to sign a code of conduct.

Prof Frimpong-Boateng said the government established 72 district committees on illegal mining, trained 3,000 small-scale miners and developed the GalamStop electronic platform to track licences and streamline permit applications.

More than 140 drone pilots were also trained to monitor mining districts, while excavators were registered with the Driver and Vehicle Licensing Authority and fitted with tracking devices.

Despite these measures, he said the enforcement structure was subsequently dismantled or allowed to lapse while the permission granted to miners remained in force.

“Every condition I have just read to you was abandoned. The lifting was not,” he stated.

He questioned whether concessions still had active barcodes, excavators remained trackable, GalamStop continued to operate in the 72 districts, and miners complied with their land-reclamation obligations.

Prof Frimpong-Boateng argued that safeguards attached to government approvals must be legally binding and recommended that all conditional permissions issued by the state should automatically expire unless there was documented proof that the conditions had been fulfilled.

“When a decision confers a benefit at once and imposes safeguards over time, the benefit will be taken, and the safeguards will lapse, unless the two are welded together in law,” he warned.