The National Communications officer of the Convention People's Party (CPP) has stated that inhabitants in the small towns and villages where illegal mining (galamsey) takes place must be part of any intervention if the fight is to be won.

According to Osei Kofi Acquah, while several interventions against the menace have failed, he believes the only way to win the fight against galamsey is to localise it if the country intends to achieve success.

Speaking to JoyNews' Joseph Obeng, Mr Acquah attributed the failure of the fight to the formation of the inter-ministerial task force without involving the people living around the galamsey areas.

He stressed the only way to fight the galamsey menace is to introduce an initiative he calls ‘See Something, Say Something.’ 

“See Something, Say Something is taking the fight of galamsey to the doorstep of the people. This is what we need to do. The cocoa farmer who always goes to his farm and sees that there is illegal activity should have a complaint centre where he can call the district commander, the crime officer, or somebody above. 

“Maybe even the Assemblyman or the unit committee member. There should be somebody who this person can call because these are people who face-to-face come into contact with the galamseyers. They go to their farm every day and see these galamseyers invade the farms and destroy the water bodies. So what we are saying is that it is time to localise the fight against illegal mining. What we have been doing is not working,” he said.

Mr Acquah further stated that the government should add whistleblowers who live in the galamsey areas to the new inter-ministerial task force to combat the menace. 

“This is where government deliberately - national security deliberately recruits certain people within that locality and makes sure that they become police informants or whistleblowers. So that these people can give the police tip-offs whenever certain unknown people enter their forest reserves and the water bodies to destroy the land. 

“When this is done, what is going to happen is that the police are going to get accurate and first-hand information which is going to lead to proper arrests,” he added.