Government is to overhaul to overhaul the mining policy and adopt a bottom-up approach in the licensing regime to ensure sanity in the mining sector.

Minister of Lands and Natural Resources Emmanuel Armah-Kofi Buah, therefore, has announced that the government will soon undertake fundamental reforms at the Minerals Commission towards achieving President John Mahama’s vision of resetting the nation.

Mr. Buah announced this during a staff durbar held at the Minerals Commission headquarters in Accra, on Monday.

“Let me sound a word of caution, if you’re not ready to align with government’s policy and stand our way, then you should start walking out right now. Nobody will be a hurdle to our resetting agenda,” the Minister warned.

He added: “We’ll not witch-hunt anyone, but if you’re a hurdle to our agenda, we’ll clear you out of our way.”

The Minister stated that Ghanaians had given the National Democratic Congress (NDC) Government an overwhelming mandate to reset the economy on the path of growth and prosperity, and nothing would be allowed to thwart the efforts.

The Minister’s maiden meeting with the staff of the Commission was to familiarise himself with its operations and share his goals with them.

The Minister told the staff: “The Minerals Commission is crucial to the country’s economy, and we need to work collectively to ensure success and reset the country.

“I will work with staff who are dedicated, with integrity, ready to obey rules and regulations and prepared to do the right thing,”

The Minister observed that although the Commission had made some progress, there were fundamental reforms that must take place to ensure the nation fully benefited from its operations.

He referred to instances where the Commission had issued prospecting mining licenses to people, but those individuals ended up digging everywhere including cocoa farms, water bodies and destroying the environment with impunity.

Mr. Buah said, “In this case, there is something fundamentally wrong with the approach in issuing licenses.

“We’ll carry out reforms in the licensing regime by shifting from the top-down approach to bottom-up, where the chiefs, District Mining Committees, District Security Commands, Environmental Protection Authority, Water Resources Commission and the local communities are involved and consulted.

“They’ll give recommendations to the Minerals Commission about the prospective applicants for licenses after engaging the local communities to express their concerns.”

In that regard, he noted, mining would be undertaken responsibly and sustainably to safeguard the environment and preserve livelihoods.

The Minister, therefore, expressed the government’s resolve to sanitise the mining sector and entreated the staff of the Commission to align with its policy direction for the good of the nation.

He reiterated the government’s commitment to revamping the Ghana Geological Survey Authority to ensure efficient geological investigations of mineralised areas.

He was of the belief that the reforms would include responsible and sustainable mining as key performance indicators (KPIs) for the various district chief executives across the country.

Mr. Martin Ayisi, the Chief Executive Officer of the Minerals Commission, in his welcome remarks, said gold earnings constituted US$11.5 billion of the country’s export receipts in 2024.

Of the amount, he said, US$4.6 billion came from the small-scale mining sector, noting that gold alone constituted 56.3 per cent of the country’s total export earnings.