Local authorities such as chiefs, District Chief Exec­utives and law enforcement agencies especially the police should be held liable for the surge in illegal mining (galamsey), the Co-chair of the Ghana Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative GHEITI), Dr. Steve Manteaw, has said.

He explained that the country’s criminal code enjoined citizens especially these local authorities to report or arrest people who commit crimes and that their failure to do anything about galamsey smacks of complicity.

Dr. Manteaw was speaking in an interview with journalists on the sidelines of a three-day dissemina­tion workshop on 2021/2022 GHEITI reports for the mining and Oil/Gas sectors at Sunyani in the Bono Region yesterday.

He also appealed to the President, Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo Addo, to lend his support and pledge not to intervene when politically exposed persons are arrested.

This, he noted, would give state investigative bodies the liberty to do their work to deal with the menace.

“If only the President who holds ultimate authority learns not to in­tervene when people behind galam­sey are arrested, it would embolden investigative bodies to carry out their work without fear or favour.

“I believe the President should remove himself from the political structure he belongs to and think along his legacy “because posterity would be the best judge when he leaves office,” he said.

Dr Manteaw said, for instance, the state should have acted swiftly by prosecuting the three chiefs who were recently destooled by Asante­hene for engaging in illegal mining in their communities.

This, he said, would have sent the right signals to persons behind the illegal trade to stop the devastation being caused to water bodies and forest reserves in the country.

Touching on calls to ban illegal mining, he explained, that a whole­sale ban was not the panacea, saying that it would rather create a facade for those engaged in the illegal activities to go underground to continue the act.

He said, for instance, during the period between 2009 and 2018, the World Bank and other development partners supported Ghana to imple­ment the natural resource and envi­ronmental governance programme to attempt to deal with the illegality in the mining and forestry sectors.

He said at the end of the progress report, it was detected that the menace had in­creased rather than declined.

Again, he added that the report also found out that ‘vested inter­est” was the reason the fight against galamsey had failed.

According to him, the report further established that peo­ple clothed with the power to stop the practice were either the perpetrators or beneficiaries of the illegality with political actors leading the charge.

To curb the galamsey menace, Dr. Manteaw proposed the enforcement of regulatory policies and laws in addition to a compliance monitoring regime.

He said enforcing laws on mining would curb or control the menace.