Alan Kyerematen, the presidential candidate of the Alliance for Revolutionary Coalition (ARC) who also doubles as the Founder and Leader of the Movement for Change (M4C), has stated that if he is elected into office, he will roll out a robust and comprehensive plan to tackle illegal mining activities in the country, popularly referred to as galamsey.
He explained that his government will support young people to establish their mining companies and will also place a one-year ban on galamsey.
“It is part of a ten-point plan—a robust, comprehensive plan to deal with galamsey and one of the plans is about helping the young people in galamsey to set up their own mining companies. It’s just one component of it. The ten-point plan starts with a complete ban on one year on small-scale and community mining. Yes, we can have a state of emergency but what are the elements. You need to go beyond the state of emergency,” he noted in a recent interview on JoyNews.
He further disclosed that as part of efforts to clamp down on illegal mining activities, the machines used by illegal miners would also be demobilised.
“We will make sure that the earth moving machines are moved into a storage and preservation environment, and I am proposing the engineers; the field engineers of the Ghana Armed Forces, will be responsible for this. Within that one-year period, the government will ensure that we restore the activities, and there is technology available to be able to do this,” he stated.
Source: www.ghanaweb.com
