Lands and Natural Resources Minister, Samuel Abu Jinapor has disclosed that the government will soon enhance exploration, prospecting and recognizance of minerals particularly gold in the Volta and Oti Regions.

The Minister disclosed this during a meeting with the Volta Regional House of Chiefs as part of a tour of the region.

According to Samuel Jinapor, currently, Ghana has established 13 regions that have gold deposits in commercial quantities out of the 16 regions.

“I am determined for us to enhance the exploration, prospecting, recognizance of minerals here in the Volta Region. And I say so because in Ghana today, 13 regions out of the 16 regions have been established to have mineral deposits in commercial quantities; either gold, bauxite, iron, diamond or lithium or the rest. In the case of gold, all the regions in Ghana seem to have it.

“The two or so regions where we’ve not yet established gold reserves is the Volta and the Oti Regions. But I’m taking the view that we need to invest more in prospecting and prospecting simply means, investigating whether or not there are gold reserves in the Volta region. There should be because historically as many of you will attest to, the conventional wisdom was that gold was found only in the Southern part of our country; Central, Western, Western North, Ashanti, Eastern,” he said.

The Paramount Chief of Avatime Traditional Area, Togbe Osie Adzatekpor while commending the decision by the Minister implored the government to deal with environmental threats like bush fires and illegal felling of trees.

“We believe that the prospecting of minerals as you said, should benefit the people. Here in the Volta region our greatest or my greatest disaster is bush fires, bush fires particularly should be minimized. My wish is that illegal chain saw operations will be minimised.”

“In my traditional area, we have instituted some measures to ensure that if you want to go into the forest to fell a tree, you must see a committee that has been set up in the traditional area before you go and fell that tree. But invariably, people do not adhere to that rule, that simple rule of informing the committee,’’ he added.