Flagbearer for the New Patriotic Party (NPP) Dr Mahamadu Bawumia has promised to introduce community mining schemes that will ensure that the small-scale mining industry is sanitized and regularised to ensure responsible and environmentally sustainable mining to curb galamsey.

The Vice President indicated that, under the scheme, the Ghana Geological Survey Authority will be given the sole mandate of mapping lands to detect where gold reserves can be mined.

Speaking at a campaign event at the Kpone Katamanso constituency in the Greater Accra region, Dr Bawumia proposed the regulation and strict enforcement of the mining laws to deter illegal miners from destroying the environment.

“So one needs to look at the whole regime of small-scale mining and sanitise that regime, regularise the regime. Make sure that the Geological Survey Authority of Ghana does the mapping for where all the gold reserves are.

“At the moment people are just doing trial and error, destroying our environment. There is no data backing where they go. They just go and dig, they don’t find, they go to the next place and start digging. they don’t find, they go to the next place.

“But I want us to set up community mining schemes with certainty from the geological survey department that here you have gold. In that case, we can make sure that those who are mining there are regularised. We bring in these gold catcher machines that don’t use mercury and make sure they are not in water bodies.

“So we direct them and license them into areas so that they do responsible mining and environmentally sustainable mining.

“That is the way you stop this. But if you don’t regulate them then they will hide to do it at night and when they feel people are not watching them, that’s where they will go.

“They will get into the water bodies. But we need to regulate them and we need to also enforce the laws that are already existent,” he stated in response to a question posed on how he intends to tackle illegal mining.