The Chief Executive Officer of the Minerals Commission, Martin Kwaku Ayisi, has backed calls for illegal miners on water bodies to be flushed out.<\/p>\n He said the Commission has not issued mining permit to any company to mine on water bodies and that anyone mining on any water body is engaging in an illegality.<\/p>\n \u201cGoing to mine on the water is a criminal activity. It is not al\u00adlowed. [We have to] just go in and take them out,\u201d he said this in Ac\u00adcra yesterday when he appeared before the Government Assur\u00adance Committee of Parliament.<\/p>\n According to him, the cam\u00adpaign for a blanket moratorium moratorium on all forms of small scale mining were misplaced and would not address the menace but worsen the situation.<\/p>\n He said in as much as some illegal miners breach the terms of their leases, it is important to note that there are thousands who are complying with the mining standards.<\/p>\n \u201cYes, it is a crisis which needs to be dealt with but there people out there; not just one or two but several thousands, if not millions, who are not connected to illegal mining so why don\u2019t you leave them out and deal with what is creating the problem?<\/p>\n \u201cThat is why I personally will not recommend a [blanket ban on small scale mining] because there are several thousands who are not involved in the kind of thing that has led us here. We should be careful not to proverbially they\u2019d the baby away with the bath wa\u00adter. We have tried it before and it didn\u2019t work,\u201d Mr Ayisi stated.<\/p>\n He further cited the ban in 2017 where over GH\u00a22.2 billion was realised from the export of gold in 2018 when the ban was in effect as a justification of why a blanket ban was unsustainable.<\/p>\n To him, 30 years of inaction by successive governments to sus\u00adtainably create the congenial en\u00advironment for small scale mining was to be blamed for the current state of mining in the country.<\/p>\n In the long term, he said, there would be the need to resource the Geological Survey Department to undertake a survey of the mineral underground based on which allocations could be made to persons who wish to venture into mining to do so.<\/p>\n Moreover, he explained that Burkinabes and Togolese, with an unreliable technology which wrongly identifies gold beds, Mr Ayisi noted, have teamed up with their Ghanaian counterparts worsening the situation.<\/p>\n If the Geological Survey De\u00adpartment is resourced to explore the use of gold catchers, the trial and error approach being used by some miners would be a thing of the past, he indicated.<\/p>\n \u201cThe solution to illegal min\u00ading, if you ask me, 99 per cent is the geological investigations of all the thousands of areas the Commission has designated. So it will take time for us to resolve the problem but we can\u2019t make apolo\u00adgies for [persons mining illegally] on the water bodies. It is illegal so we just have to get rid of them,\u201d he stressed.<\/p>\n Watch the latest edition of BizHeadlines below:<\/b><\/p>\n![\"Chief](\"https:\/\/cdn.ghanaweb.com\/imagelib\/pics\/790\/79078259.295.jpg\" "\\"Chief")
Chief Executive Officer of the Minerals Commission, Martin Kwaku Ayisi<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n