President John Dramani Mahama has announced a new strategy to prevent illegal miners from re-entering forest reserves cleared of galamsey, with military detachments to remain in the reclaimed areas as a deterrent against renewed encroachment. The President said the measure had become necessary because the previous practice of handing cleared forest reserves back to the Forestry Commission had failed to prevent illegal miners from returning.
Speaking during his tour of the Upper East Region, President Mahama said illegal miners had repeatedly returned to reserves after enforcement teams had driven them out, sometimes overpowering or forcing forest guards to withdraw. He said the government had therefore decided that troops would remain in reclaimed reserves after clearing operations to protect the areas from renewed illegal mining. “After we’ve cleared the forest reserve, we leave a military detachment there. And that means we have to spend more money. One, you must feed the soldiers; you must provide them with the logistics to continue to stay there in the forest,” President Mahama stated.
The President also acknowledged that maintaining military personnel in the reserves would increase the cost of the anti-galamsey campaign but insisted that the government would not relent in its efforts to protect the country’s forest resources. “But we will not give up; we will continue the fight against illegal mining,” he said. President Mahama said the government had made progress in clearing illegal miners from the forest reserves affected by galamsey, noting that nearly 49 reserves had been invaded. He said enforcement operations, including those undertaken by the National Anti-Illegal Mining Operations Secretariat (NAIMOS), had resulted in the seizure of excavators and changfan machines and the removal of miners from several affected areas.
However, he acknowledged the difficulty of sustaining the gains because displaced miners often moved to other locations or returned to previously cleared areas. “We’ve seized excavators, we’ve seized Changfan machines, and you drive them out of this area, they run to this other area. But we are making progress,” he said. The new strategy is intended to address what the government considers a major weakness in previous reclamation efforts—ensuring that cleared reserves remain protected after enforcement teams leave. While reaffirming the government’s determination to stop illegal mining, President Mahama said mining itself remained an important source of employment and economic opportunity, particularly for young people. He said the government’s broader objective was to formalize mining activities, bring them under effective regulation and ensure that communities benefited from legitimate mining without the environmental destruction associated with illegal operations.
“Upper East has good potential, and mining can create jobs, but we need to make sure that these are formalized mines so that they can employ our young people to operate,” he said. President Mahama cited the Cardinal Mine in the Upper East Region as an example of formal mining operations that could contribute to employment and economic activity. He also referred to the planned Black Volta mine development in the Upper West Region, saying properly regulated mining could provide additional opportunities for young people. “There are several other areas that we can see the potential for proper mining so that it can produce more jobs for our young people,” he said.
He stressed that the government’s objective was not to eliminate mining but to replace uncontrolled illegal operations with a regulated sector over which the state could exercise greater oversight. “Our target is to formalize the mining activity so that we have greater control over it than the current scattered illegal mining that takes place,” President Mahama said. The President also sought to distinguish mining in parts of the Upper East Region from the type of environmental destruction associated with illegal mining in forested areas, particularly in southern Ghana. According to him, much of the gold-bearing material in the Upper East is found in rock formations, meaning mining operations in those areas generally involve extracting gold from rock rather than destroying forested landscapes. “The advantage with the Upper East Region is that most of the places where the gold is found are found in rock. And so it does not create the kind of environmental destruction that we see in the south,” he said.
He explained that the process involves blasting and processing rock to extract the gold. The President said the geological characteristics of the region therefore meant that mining did not necessarily produce the same scale of devastation seen in some southern forest reserves. The government’s approach, he said, would consequently combine tougher enforcement against illegal mining in environmentally sensitive areas with efforts to formalize legitimate mining elsewhere.The strategy marks a shift from relying primarily on the removal of illegal miners to maintaining a permanent security presence in reclaimed forest reserves, while pursuing a regulated mining regime intended to create jobs without sacrificing the country’s natural resources.
By: Joyce Owusu
