Social commentator and financial analyst,Sydney Casely-Hayford, has called for the legalization of galamsey.
He wondered why Ashanti Gold Fields and Newmont Ghana have the right to mine gold while the artisanal indigene has no right to be a miner.
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Sydney Casely-Hayford pushes for legalisation of galamsey
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Speaking on Citi FM “The Big Issue” Saturday, Casely-Hayford said: “The law says, this is large scale mining and they’ve defined it and criteria in which you can have a large scale mining enterprise. This is small scale mining and it’s defined very clearly under the small scale mining act.
“Anybody who doesn’t fall under category A or category B is declared illegal. So galamsey has become illegal by default and not by action. Now, somebody should come and tell why the Ashanti Gold Fields and the Newmont among others have the right to be mine and that my small artisanal indigene has no right to be a miner. He has a right to be a miner.
“This is what he has set out to be his life work, he wants to mine. You cannot tell him, you cannot be a miner you must instead be a farmer.”
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Casely-Hayford continued: “I think that the first thing we have to do is to make the so called galamsey legal, legalize it.
“In legalizing it means giving it a law and also make it very clear that nobody, whether you are a large scale, small scale or galamsey scale…but none of them must be allowed to mine in any of the water bodies.
“That should be restricted because it is more important for us to have good clean healthy water than to have a law for mining. So they can go out and mine anywhere they want but they cannot mine the water bodies that is out of the question.”
His call comes after weeks of intense media campaign for government to ban galamsey which is destroying farm lands and polluting the nation's rivers.
Last week, the police arrested five Chinese and five Ghanaians involved in galamsey. They have been arraigned before the court.
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Government has also place a moratorium on licences for small scale mining in response to the media's call for an end to galamsey.
On Saturday, the Chinese government in a strongly worded letter warned Ghana that a clamp down on Chinese Miners could spark diplomatic row.
The letter, issued by it embassy in Accra said many of the Chinese nationals involved in galamsey are the victims of fraud and blackmail and as such the police needed to deal with cases on an individual bases.
“We think it is very important that any operation against illegal mining should be carried out in line with Ghanaian laws and international recognized norms, the mass arrest and media hype should be minimized, the cases should be dealt with on individual base and the legitimate rights of the miners should be respected.”
“Since a great part of Chinese nationals involved in illegal mining are also victims of fraud and blackmail, if casualties are incurred and plundering and looting take place during operation, it will be extremely harmful to the bilateral relations,” it said.
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