The Executive Director of the Centre for Social Impact Studies, Richard Ellimah, has urged the government to adopt an alternative to the use of military personnel to police the small scale mining sector.
Speaking on the Citi Breakfast Show, Mr. Ellimah noted that this strategy has proven to be ineffective over the last four decades.
“If they were successful, I am not sure we would be using them every year. So probably, it is time for us to go back to the drawing board. Look at Operation Vanguard, and see if we can use another strategy apart from the use of the military,” he said.
Operation Vanguard is a Military Police Joint Task Force set up by the state in 2017 to enforce illegal small scale mining laws.
But Mr. Ellimah described the ongoing Operation Vanguard work as a “flashy firefighting approach.”
Cleary “we are just wasting money, we are just throwing money down the drain,” he added.
Mr. Ellimah also expressed concern with the “institutional confusion” in the state’s approach to fighting illegal mining because of the number of ministries and committees with a stake in the fight against illegal mining.
In his view, the “additional bureaucracies rather contributed to the problem.”
Though President Nana Akufo-Addo famously staked his presidency on the fight against illegal mining, which has since been declared a failure by many observers, Mr. Elimah said there was still time to salvage the situation before 2020.
“The President’s major problem was a lack of understanding of “the dynamics of galamsey,” Mr. Ellimah observed.
“If the President can put his foot down and understand the dynamics and begin to engage the various interest holders, I am very sure that we can still bring the fight against galamsey back on track.”
Military involvement in policing small scale mining
Mr. Elimah at National Conference on ASM in May 2019 outlined some of the failings of the military over the years.
In the late 1980s, the first recorded nationwide operation against “illegal” mining was undertaken after the passage of the Small Scale Mining Law, PNDCL 218, 1989.
Another security crackdown on “illegal” mining took place in November 2006 named “Operation Flush Out”.
This particular operation was the subject of controversy over alleged human rights abuses.
In the Report of Human Rights Council to the UN General Assembly from April 2008, the operation was described as “violent and bloody” and resulting in “gross human rights violations.”
In 2013, following renewed concern over the threat of illegal mining, the government-sanctioned another security operation under the banner of an “Inter-Ministerial Taskforce”.
This operation was focused on weeding out foreign nationals engaged in illegal small scale mining.
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