The Minister for Lands and Natural Resources, Samuel Abu Jinapor, is working hard to deal with the lack of sufficient personnel in monitoring the activities of licensed illegal small miners in the country to ensure that they stay within the remit of the permit given to them, Ben Aryee, Advisor on Mines to the Minister, has said.

Mr Aryee explained on the Sunrise show on 3FM Monday, April 12 that one of the challenges the minister is saddled with is the lack of adequate personnel and resources for monitoring.

However, he told host Alfred Ocansey, that steps have been taken to deal with the situation.

Recounting the works that have been done in ending illegal small scale mining (galamsey) in the country, he said “Essentially, when the small scale mining group is licensed it is the Minerals Commission which will process their license. I must say that a few years ago when I used to be at the Minerals Commission, we had nine District Offices only.

“As I speak, we have over 13 and there are plans to open up more offices, the regional offices they even have satellite offices to be closer to the people to be sure that they are with them all the time to make sure they are doing the right thing.

“That is very important, it is not just about pollution but a lot of them are not even doing the right things in terms recovering the gold they claim to be mining, they are losing a lot of the gold. So there is the need for constant supervision to help them along. We may think they are losing gold, they are not losing gold, Ghana is losing gold and we don’t want that to happen.”

He added “So we supervise them to improve their recoveries, they make more money they are happy and we are happy because they do things properly environmentally. So we are expanding the numbers to cover as much as possible all licensed areas.

“Unfortunately, where it is not licensed sometimes it is on our blind side, sometimes we are aware of it but we simply don’t have enough personnel on the ground and we are trying to deal with that.

“That is one of the things my Minister is very keen on doing on the ground and enough logistics.”

Meanwhile, the Australian High Commissioner to Ghana has said the emphasis on ending illegal small scale mining (Galamsey) in the country is impressive.

He said this when he had a meeting with Minister for the Savanna Region, Mr Saeed Muhazu Jibril last week while at Mole National Park to launch the Australian aid project there

After the meeting, he wrote on his Facebook page that “Caught up with Minister for the Savanna Region, the Hon Saeed Muhazu Jibril this week while at Mole National Park to launch our Australian aid project there.

“In addition to our discussion on elephant conservation and anti-poaching, I was impressed with his emphasis on ending illegal mining, tree-cutting and charcoal production, all of which cause significant damage to Ghana’s environment.”