Group Fires Minister …Our Seized Excavators Being Used For Galamsey

Government may have to cough out an urgent answer to the worrisome claim that some 500 excavators seized on suspicion that they were being used for illegal mining have disappeared as a group calling itself the Concerned Small Scale Miners Union say they can prove that the said heavy-duty machines are not missing but rather being used for Galamsey and other activities.

Professor Frimpong-Boateng, Minister for Environment, Science, Technology and Innovation, who doubles as chairman of the  Inter-Ministerial Committee on Illegal Mining (IMCIM) went public last week with an interesting claim that thought government seized the hundreds of excavators between 2017 and 2018 when the war against illegal mining was in full flight, most of the seized machines cannot be accounted for because they have disappeared from the premises of the District Assemblies where they were being kept.

Challenging the bizarre claim, Richard Kojo Peprah, president of the Concerned Small Scale Miners Union, has said his group has been “able to find some of these machines in Tamale. Some of these machines had tracking devices. So we are able to trace them.

“When they take the machine in the Ashanti region then, they send it to the Northern region. They are engaged in one activity or the other. Some are even engaged in galamsey”, he told Citi News.

On Tuesday, a statement, jointly issued by the Media Coalition Against Galamsey and OccupyGhana, a political and social pressure group, also questioned the logic of the explanation that the seized excavators were truly missing.

The statement explained that if the Inter-Ministerial Committee on Illegal Mining had followed due process and abided strictly by the law, such a situation would never have occurred.

The joint statement, among other questions, asked: “First, under the 2006 Minerals and Mining Act, it is illegal for anyone to “erect equipment… for the purpose of mining” without being the holder of either a mining lease or a small-scale mining licence. Everyone who does this commits an offence. The government has to explain to Ghanaians whether the persons from whom the equipment was allegedly seized were also arrested. If that did not happen, the government should explain why it did not happen. Or, were the illegal miners also allowed to disappear just like the equipment?

“Second, the law then provides that upon the arrest of illegal miners, the equipment they were using “shall, regardless of the ownership…, be seized and kept in the custody of the police.” It is for very good reason that the law demands that the equipment should be kept by the police, and no other institution. The government therefore has to explain to Ghanaians why the equipment allegedly seized was kept with District Assemblies and not the police. Was this deliberate? Was this to make it very easy for the equipment to simply ‘disappear’? Did anyone take an inventory of the seized equipment and if so where is that inventory? Which public officers were responsible for flouting the law?

“Third, the Act demands that the arrested persons should be tried in court and then upon conviction, the court is empowered to “order the forfeiture of any equipment… seized.” The government has to explain to Ghanaians whether the persons from whom the equipment was seized were duly prosecuted, and if not, why not? Without prosecution, the seized equipment cannot be forfeited in the manner the law demands. Are any prosecutions still taking place? If so, have there been any convictions? And if so, did the courts order forfeiture? Is the government able to publish a report on these matters?

“Fourth, the Act provides that within 60 days of the confiscation, the Minister for Mines shall “allocate the equipment… to the appropriate state institution and publish in the Gazette the name of the state institution to which the equipment… is allocated.” We do not need to ask this question because it is pretty obvious to all of us that this has not happened.

It said “Considering the above and the revelation by the Minister, the government should be as unhappy as we are, and more so. If the government with all the power and force at its disposal is unwilling to or incapable of implementing and enforcing its own laws, then it gives a signal to potential wrongdoers that we have no respect for the rule of law; it is just something we mention to others to make us feel good. That is why the nation is still under brazen attack from illegal miners. They know that we make noise and even deploy our military, but we have no teeth to bite. Nowhere is this more evident than the blatant illegal mining at the place called “Dollar Power,” and the apparent inability or unpreparedness of the government to enforce the law there. This and the impunity it connotes should be a scar on our conscience.”