{"id":1181511,"date":"2022-08-17T15:25:30","date_gmt":"2022-08-17T15:25:30","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/2022\/08\/17\/government-just-paying-lip-service-to-galamsey-fight-dr-asah-asante\/"},"modified":"2022-08-17T15:25:30","modified_gmt":"2022-08-17T15:25:30","slug":"government-just-paying-lip-service-to-galamsey-fight-dr-asah-asante","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/2022\/08\/17\/government-just-paying-lip-service-to-galamsey-fight-dr-asah-asante\/","title":{"rendered":"Government just paying lip service to &#8216;galamsey&#8217; fight &#8211; Dr Asah-Asante"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><\/p>\n<div id=\"article-text\" style=\"line-height: 2; letter-spacing: -0.5px;font-size: 18px;\">\n<p>                        <!--p class=\"ky_saved_articles_link\"><span class=\"ky_saved_articles_hide\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"\" class=\"ky_saved_articles_img\" alt=\"Government just paying lip service to 'galamsey' fight - Dr Asah-Asante\" title=\"Government just paying lip service to 'galamsey' fight - Dr Asah-Asante\"><\/span> Bookmark<\/p-->\n<p>A political scientist at the University of Ghana, Dr Kwame Asah-Asante, is skeptical about government\u2019s commitment to fighting illegal mining popularly known as \u2018galamsey\u2019.<\/p>\n<p>According to him, the Akufo-Addo administration \u201cis treating the case with kids\u2019 gloves and paying lip service to the problem.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>The country has been battling illegal mining for years now.<\/p>\n<p>In 2017, the Akufo-Addo government set up a joint military and police task force to clamp down on the menace. But the task force withered out with little result achieved.<\/p>\n<p>Fast forward to 2021, another special military operation began to remove all persons and logistics involved in mining from Ghana\u2019s water bodies.<\/p>\n<p>It followed the directive of President Akufo-Addo to the Ghana Armed Forces (GAF).<\/p>\n<p>It\u2019s been over a year, yet, illegal mining is still prevalent.<\/p>\n<p>It is on the back of these two unsuccessful operations by the incumbent government that Dr Asah-Asante is skeptical about government\u2019s commitment to fight the menace.<\/p>\n<p>Speaking on <strong>JoyNews\u2019 AM Show<\/strong> on Wednesday, the political scientist believed that the government is tip-toeing around the problem instead of tackling the issue head-on without favour.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cGalamsey is a sorry story and let\u2019s face it, government is not prepared to fight. If it were, it will be looking for people who commit this crime and definitely, they will find them.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThis is because the things that the people use, the machines that they use are too huge that even a child in that area where they operate can point to their owners,\u201d he opined.<\/p>\n<p>                <!-- Post Tags --><\/p><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>A political scientist at the University of Ghana, Dr Kwame Asah-Asante, is skeptical about government\u2019s commitment to fighting illegal mining popularly known as \u2018galamsey\u2019. According to him, the Akufo-Addo administration \u201cis treating the case with kids\u2019 gloves and paying lip service to the problem.\u201d The country has been battling illegal mining for years now. In [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1181513,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[187],"tags":[23679,1271,12861,1090,23680,4230,185],"class_list":["post-1181511","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-politics","tag-asahasante","tag-fight","tag-galamsey","tag-government","tag-lip","tag-paying","tag-service"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/2022\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1181511","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/2022\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/2022\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/2022\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/2022\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1181511"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/2022\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1181511\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/2022\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1181511"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/2022\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1181511"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/2022\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1181511"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}