A lecturer at the University of Ghana has expressed disappointment in the outgoing government’s failure to combat illegal mining despite promising to tackle it when given the mandate.

According to Prof Akosua Adomako Ampofo, the advocacy against galamsey had begun long before the incumbent government took office, citing individuals and organizations that had been involved in this.

Speaking on JoyNews’ Newsfile on Saturday, January 4, Prof Adomako Ampofo expressed surprise at Mr Akufo-Addo's suggestion during his last State of Nation address that some advocates against illegal mining had only recently found their voices.

“So he [Akufo-Addo] inherited from a previous government where already this kind of social activism was occurring,” she said.

She added that, despite numerous policy suggestions from the Ghana Academy of Arts and Sciences in dealing with the menace, they were not considered by the government, highlighting subsequent actions including strikes by the University Teachers Association of Ghana, UTAG, over the matter.

In addition, Prof Ampofo revealed that Ghana is one of the countries with the lowest proportion of forest cover in the sub-region.

“We are a country in the sub-region that has among the lowest proportion of forest, and then we like hailing our greatness. We know that we need the forest for our climate, we need it for our water, we need it for our livelihood, we need it for our food,” she asserted.

Prof Ampofo suggested that some form of apology and remedies should have been offered by the outgoing president to the public for the failure to address galamsey as promised.

“The NPP government has not been able to deal with this in my view, but at least, I was really expecting some prescriptions for what could have been done, some apology to us that this hasn’t happened, and some prescriptions for what the incoming government should do,” she mentioned.

She advised that leaders in power should avoid the blame game and acknowledge when they fail to keep their promises, offering caution to the incoming administration.

While delivering his last State of the Nation address, the President said he was aware that fighting galamsey was not a popular position for a president to take, and that achieving success was not going to be easy.

President Akufo-Addo further stated that the fight against galamsey directly contributed to his party losing several parliamentary seats in the 2020 elections.

Read Also: I knew fighting galamsey wasn’t a universally popular position for a president to take – Akufo-Addo