Tackling Illegal Mining: President’s Deportation Plan for Illegal Miners Falls Short – Dr. Ashigbey

The convener of the Media Coalition against Illegal Mining, Dr. Kenneth Ashigbey, has maintained that the decision of the president to deport foreigners who are involved in illegal mining is not the way to tackle the issue.

According to him, these foreigners are going to return and continue their illegal activities.

Speaking on Joy News’s The Pulse on Tuesday, April 15, Dr. Ashigbey emphasized that Ghana has porous borders, which will allow these illegal miners back into the country.

“If you deport all of these Nigers, you deport those from Burkina Faso and all of those from Guinea; they’ll come back because your borders are porous. And so this is an existential crisis that we are facing.”

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He believes that illegal mining has its major effect on the society, and so the societal structures should be solidified to be able to deal with illegal mining decisively.

“And we need to also ensure that we have our various social structures in place because the issues of drug abuse and all of that, all of these people have to be rehabilitated.”

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He applauded the increased involvement of the military and police to tackle the issue and advised that the security personnel should be constantly on the galamsey grounds to be able to eradicate this canker totally.