Akufo-Addo is only fighting galamsey with lip service – Sam George

 

The Member of Parliament (MP) for Ningo-Prampram, Mr. Sam Nartey George, has urged President Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo to stop the rhetoric and hit the ground running in the galamsey fight.

In his view, President Akufo-Addo is only paying lip service to the fight against illegal small-scale mining, locally known as galamsey, instead of fighting it head-on.

According to him, the president is only giving Ghanaians nice “soundbites rather than real action”.

The Ningo-Prampram lawmaker insisted that those behind the menace are government appointees or person aligned to the governing New Patriotic Party and thus urged the President to crack the whip to serve as a deterrent to others.

“Mr. President, it is your party national executives and regional executives, your party people, your presidential staffers, your former ministers who are engaged in the galamsey menace. They are the people carrying out small-scale mining and destroying our water bodies. So Mr. President, put your money where your mouth is. If you want to fight galamsey, deal with your own appointees and stop giving us soundbites and give us real action.”

“The truth is that Mr. President, it is your party people who are doing the galamsey. Nobody in the NDC is engaged in it because we don’t control the security agencies that are protecting these illegal miners. We don’t manufacture excavators in this country, they all come through the port. So who is giving permits for those excavators to be imported? If the government is really committed to fighting the menace, can’t the government place a ban on the importation of all excavators?”

Mr. Sam George made the call on Citi TV‘s Breakfast Daily programme on Thursday, April 15, 2021.

His comments come on the back of the ongoing National Consultative Dialogue, a forum the President is hopeful will come out with a better roadmap for dealing with galamsey activities once and for all.

“Out of this maiden consultative dialogue, I hope we will build a national consensus around a national policy on small scale mining, that promotes a responsible, viable, environmentally sustainable small-scale mining industry, which has discarded the use of mercury, ‘changfangs’ and excavators, which has barred the involvement of foreign nationals, and which has rejected the destruction of our forests, environment and water bodies,” President Akufo-Addo said.