SANITISING ACTIVITIES OF GALAMSEY OPERATORS (NOV 12)

THE penchant among many people in our society to wilfully violate the law and get away with it has encouraged others to believe that deviant behaviour always pays and, therefore, such misconduct is rewarding.
A lot has been written and said over the years about the phenomenon of illegal mining, popularly called galamsey.
In mining areas of our country, particularly in places where gold and diamond are mined, it is a matter of record that fierce competition for the concessions bearing the ore and the stones has, more often than not, led to very ugly confrontations between these galamsey operators and those holding legitimate title to those concessions.
What is more tragic for these practitioners of illegal mining and the nation as a whole is the loss of many lives due mainly to the lack of sound safety measures in the pits or tunnels they dig to exploit the ore.
Only last Tuesday, reports emerged from Dompoase, near Wassa Akropong in the Amenfi East District in the Western Region, to the effect that 18 people lost their lives when a mining pit they were prospecting for gold caved in and buried them (see front page).
It is always a sad occasion when precious human lives are lost, especially in circumstances that otherwise could have been avoided.
The loss of such lives, apart from the gnashing of teeth, the trauma, pain and anguish it unleashes to the families, relatives, friends and well-wishers of the bereaved, also adversely impacts on the development and progress of the nation, as the most vital resource of society, the people, are lost to it.
While it is often too easy or convenient to label these galamsey operators as criminals and set the law enforcement agents on them, in an attempt to attain a quick fix of the problem, a more sober reflection will counsel a better and more scientific approach to dealing with the issue.
More often than not, it is the big and established multinational mining firms which manage to secure vast areas of the gold-bearing ores as their concessions.
The general well-being of the indigenous people, including those from the surrounding areas, is, with the exception of a few notable cases, not the fundamental concern of these mining conglomerates.
Indeed, that is why mining communities, in spite of the huge wealth they are sitting on, still rank high among the league of the poor.
Not only do the majority of people of these areas fail to get jobs in these mines; their lands and water bodies which could be used to create alternative employment for them are also either taken up as part of the concessions or destroyed in the process of extracting the ore.
Thus vast numbers of people, including those from outside the mining communities attracted by the mineral wealth, are left without jobs and money to look after themselves and their dependants.
In the face of these difficulties, and with no hope of benefiting from the mineral wealth secured by these firms, galamsey becomes the only avenue for many of these desperate, largely unskilled people.
We believe that a better way of dealing with the galamsey menace is to integrate the operators into the general mining plan of such mineral rich communities.
The government, through the various district assemblies, community leaders and mining concerns, should look at the possibility of forming out of these desperate and unorganised group mining co-operatives which can be given some part of the concessions to operate .
Through these and other innovative measures, it is possible to manage and control the galamsey menace and thus save many more precious lives which are lost all the time to these unsavoury practices.