The Director of Policy, Planning, Research, Monitoring and Evaluation at the Water Resources Commission (WRC), Dr. Mawuli Lumor, has stressed that no legal framework permits mining in rivers and other water bodies, insisting that all such activities are entirely illegal.
Speaking on The Point of View on Channel One TV on Wednesday, October 1, Dr. Lumor said it is misleading to conflate licensed small-scale mining with galamsey, since the latter is largely associated with mining in rivers, which no state institution approves.
“What people confuse the two is that they jam small-scale mining together and call it galamsey. There are people who are legally doing the right thing; it is the illegal ones. Because no institution will issue a permit for somebody to go and mine in a river, it won’t happen. All those mining in the rivers are illegal, and every effort to apprehend them has always been difficult,” he explained.
Dr. Lumor cautioned that the continued pollution of rivers by illegal miners poses a direct threat to water security, warning that treatment plants across the country are already struggling to cope with rising turbidity levels.
He added that illegal operators exploit resources without paying revenue to the state or observing sustainable practices.
“Those who have gone through the process and acquired their permits are guided to mine sustainably. There’s been a lot of benefits in illegality; they don’t pay anything to the state, they don’t take any instructions from anybody, they dig what they want and how they want, and that is the problem for us,” he noted.
The WRC has consistently warned that Ghana risks losing several major rivers to pollution if urgent measures are not taken to stop galamsey.
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