A fellow at the Centre of Democratic Development (CDD), Kwame Sarpong Asiedu, has attributed the failure in the approaches to tackling illegal mining (galamsey), to the lack of trust among the players within the mining sector.

According to him, trust among the relevant players is very fundamental to the fight and yet has not been paid attention to.

“I think we are all not paying attention to fundamental issues that have caused us to fail. And that is the lack of trust between all players in the mining sector. And the only way we are going to get to the bottom of it is there to be a commission of a sort and I don’t know how quickly we can get that in place but I think that will be the best way to go,” he said.

On the issue of appointing members onto the commission of enquiry into the allegations by the former chairman of the Inter-Ministerial Commission on illegal Mining, Prof Frimpong-Boateng, Mr Asiedu noted that the people to make up the commission must act on behalf of the citizens to tackle illegal mining.

“That’s why I talked about the issue of trust. One thing I have always said about our democracy is, yes, the president will always appoint. But the people appointed should always know that they have to deliver their mandate on behalf of the citizens because they are citizens themselves. And this is an existential threat and they are under threats as a well,” he added.

To him, it is important for the appointed members to utilise their powers to the benefit of the citizens.

Mr Asiedu was speaking on Joy News’ Newsfile and monitored by GhanaWeb.

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