The Member of Parliament (MP) for South Dayi has alleged that the government is having challenges curbing illegal small-scale mining (galamsey) because of the involvement of New Patriotic Party (NPP) bigwigs in the menace. According to Rockson-Nelson Dafeamekpor, the government spent a lot of money to train NPP members in small-scale mining who are now invading lands and water bodies in the country and are mining without licenses. The MP, who made these remarks during a panel discussion on Good Morning Ghana monitored by GhanaWeb on Tuesday, October 11, added that instead of the government regulating the activities of the small-scale miners it trained, the party's bigwigs have taken over the mining and are using the trained miners for their benefit. "…if you check the budget of this government from 2018, we have spent millions of Ghana Cedis on a programme government termed small-scale mining and actually sent a lot of party people to China to go and train. I have evidence. Party people were sent to China to go and train on how to undertake small scale-mining in an environmentally sanitized manner. "They were given certification and were deployed. The problem is that in deploying these people that we spent government money as a flagship government programme to create jobs for the youth, the party took it over. And instead of being a job for the lowly in the party, party stalwarts began to take control and rather employed those people as their mining hands. "The key problem has been regulation. How do we regulate these people?.. If we conduct an audit of the (mining) concessions, you will be shocked that about 90 percent of the areas that have been degraded are under no concession at all," he said. He added that because these party people have equipment that can be used to determine where minerals are found, they just go into people's farms, pay them off and start mining. "Once they determine the ore-bearing mineral, whether it lies in the alluvium of a river bed or it lies at the bully of a cocoa farm, they will go and dig it up and process. That is the problem," he noted. Watch the MP’s remarks below: You can also watch this episode of People & Places on GhanaWeb TV: IB/SEA