Emmanuel Armah-Kofi Buah, the Minister of Lands and Natural Resources, announced that in 2024, GHS 6.2 billion worth of excavators were imported into Ghana, ranking third in the country’s import bill.

The Minister suspected that those excavators might have ended up at the country’s mining sites for illegal mining activities and thus urged the Ministry of Transport and the Driver and Vehicles Licensing Authority (DVLA) to collaborate to control their importation.

The Minister also announced the ban of all floating platforms on water bodies, popularly known as “Changfans,” which are mostly used by illegal miners on rivers.

Addressing a news conference in Accra on Wednesday, Mr. Armah-Kofi Buah said going forward, to curb illegal mining, the issuance of small-scale mining licenses should begin from the district level with the active involvement of the District Security Command and the district mining committees to vet the necessary documentations submitted by the prospective applicants.

This follows an interim report issued by an 18-member Working Committee set up by the government last month to review the current mining licensing regime and recommend a comprehensive strategy to tackle the illegal mining menace.

The Minister stated that some 60 excavators had been seized so far over the past two months by the military taskforce

The excavators are currently in the custody of the Regional Ministers.

Instead of burning those excavators, the Minister said, they would be deplored for road construction purposes.

The Government, he stated, had also recovered seven out of the nine forest reserves captured by illegal miners for illegal mining activities.

The Minister told the media that plans were far advanced to amend the legislative instrument L.I 2462, to prohibit mining in forest reserves.

The amendment of the law, he explained, would also take away the President’s power to grant mining license to mine in the forest reserves.