Accra, April 4, GNA – Dr Steve Manteaw, Workstream Technical Advisor, UK-Ghana Gold Programme, says there is a need to devise ways to create access to funding for Small Scale Miners in Ghana.
He said Ghana was Africa’s leading producer of gold and that looking at the national production, a substantial portion of about 35 to 40 per cent was contributed by the Small-Scale Mining Sector but their contribution to the mining sector revenue was less than 2 per cent.
Dr Manteaw said this during the Launch of the Ghana National Association of Small-Scale Miners’ (GNASSM) Documentary and Policy Brief on Artisanal and Small-Scale Mining (ASM) Reforms Research in Ghana.
The study was commissioned by the Third World Network – Africa (TWN-Africa), under the Power of Voices Partnerships (PvP) in Fair4All project in Ghana with funding from the Dutch Foreign Affairs Ministry.
PvP intended to explore the impact and challenges of post – the 2017 ASM Reform effort to assess the gaps and weaknesses within the current regulatory frameworks governing the ASGM sector in Ghana and outline key reforms necessary to enhance regulatory quality.
The event was on the theme: “Improving ASM Policies, Regulations and Practices based on Lessons Learnt from Recent State Interventions in the SM Sector.”
Dr Manteaw said this raised serious concerns about smuggling because as a country “we had not invested in the Small-Scale Mining Sector, and that we had created opportunities for some foreigners to finance small scale mining operations.”
“So, our Small-Scale Miners take out the gold and give it to the financiers, who usually will smuggle the gold and avoid the payment of taxes to the state,” he added.
Dr Manteaw said with the export of gold, the assay laboratory at the Kotoka International Airport put up by the Precious Minerals Marketing Company (PMMC) was the only checkpoint, allowing for smuggling of gold through other borders.
He called for support for PMMC to also be present at various border posts to set up assay laboratories to check the value of gold being exported for the payment of required taxes.
Mr Godwin Amarh, General Secretary, GNASSM, said the study revealed that ASM had grown in scale, complexity, and informality in Ghana.
He said while a substantial part of operators in the sector was driven by poverty, the sector had also seen an unfettered intrusion of “big capital” foreign investors who had conspired with the local elite to take advantage of regulatory lapses in the sector to engage in illegal acts.
Mr Amarh said the biggest source of informality and illegality in Ghana’s ASM sector was the weak enforcement of regulations, which resulted from a combination of factors, including inadequate capacity of regulatory institutions, and political interference, among others.
He said the study revealed that the ASM licensing process remained one of the most important regulatory challenges in Ghana’s ASM sector, adding that not only was the process complex but also expensive and generally out of reach for most of the operators in the sector.
The General Secretary called for the abandoning of the military approach to reforming the sector, stating that “it must be clear that the militaristic approach to dealing with illegal mining does not work and must be completely avoided as a strategy for regularising the ASM system.”
He said instead of the military approach there should be more investment in strengthening the regulatory capacity of the relevant state institutions and grant them sufficient operational autonomy.
Mr Amarh said the State must prioritise and invest heavily in creating designated mining zones for ASM operators, and that this would require committed capacity building for the Geological Survey Department.
“To address the compounding effects of the ASM sector on the country’s major hydrological resources, the state must begin to contemplate abolishing alluvial mining as a matter of general mining policy,” the General Secretary added.
GNA