The Director of WACAM, a civil Society group in the mining sector, Mr Daniel Owusu Koranteng, has said that the power imbalance that occurs during negotiating of mining contracts is a key issue that needed to be addressed.
He alleged that mostly after licences are issued, communities are left to their fate to negotiate the terms with multinational mining companies, even though these communities lacked the capacity to do so.
Consequently, the communities give their social license only for them to realise after about three years that their lands are gone, very small compensation has been paid, their rivers polluted but then the companies insist there was a negotiation.
“When the nation opens up too much for big mining companies to locate in rural areas and we leave the poor people to their fate to negotiate on technical issues and documents such as the Environmental Impact Assessment, then the outcome normally indicates a kind of power imbalance,” he said at a stakeholders’ forum in Accra.
Mr Koranteng said the mining law available in Ghana now was promotional and so the situation called for a very strong regulation.
“Everything is done to ensure that we promote mining. So it’s just like going to the market and your wares are not sold and in the evening you reduce the price for people to come and buy and that is what we did,” he said.
Licensing
In a rebuttal, the Mining Advisor at the Ministry of Land and Natural Resources, Mr Benjamin Aryee, said that government was not only concerned about promoting mining but appreciates its responsibility to promote the livelihoods of the citizenry.
Therefore, he said the government promoted investment into the mining sector in order to generate some resources to carry out some of these responsibilities.
Mr Aryee explained that the small scale mining licenses were filed at the local offices of the Minerals Commission and forwarded to the head office after feasibility.
He said the commission in turn wrote to the district assemblies concerned and expressly stated that copies were served on chiefs and land owners for about three weeks, after which if no objection was raised then the processing of the license continued.
“I must say that in practice though it has been very difficult to get this done. I know that for a fact because there have been a number of complaints. But whenever there have been any objection from anyone the processing of the license stops until it’s sorted out,” he said.
He added tha tthe government was keen to ensure that the local interest was protected.
The forum
The stakeholders’ forum on the campaign against irresponsible mining activities was organised by WACAM in collaboration with Citi FM and Tropenbos Ghana.
It was on the theme, “Mobilising National Efforts for Responsible Mining.”
Most participants expressed concern about the fact that mining, no matter the form was creating serious problems to the environment such that people could no longer engage in profitable farming.
The Head of the Department of Archaeology and Heritage Studies at the University of Ghana, Legon, Dr Wazi Apoh, said the EIA of irresponsible mining privileged studies on water bodies, wildlife and noise pollution to the neglect of heritage impact assessment.
He called for a heritage impact assessment bill to be put in place.
“This will compel all earthmoving activities, all companies that deal with earth moving, mining firms etc to make use of archeologists to test all these sites to make sure that they don’t impact negatively on our heritage resources before a go ahead is given,” he said.
He added if the above was done, it would maintain the sanctity of the county’s heritage which defined the identity of its people.
The President of the National Association of Small Scale Miners, Nii Adjetey Mensah expressed worry that the six-month moratorium issued to small scale mining operators to stop work posed a serious risk to a lot of miners who had taken loans from banks and would be unable to pay.
“The livelihoods of other people who work at our sites are also at stake. We are saying that don’t throw the baby and the bath water away,” he said. — GB
