Is the anti-galamsey fight losing steam?
As has become the norm with the rhetoric of officials around the fight against illegal mining, the Deputy Chief Executive of the Minerals Commission in charge of Support Services, Emmanuel Anyimah, has given an assurance that Ghana’s latest offensive against illegal mining is not another episodic crackdown dressed in urgency.
Instead, he claims that the current campaign is a structural reset designed to outlive political cycles, embed enforcement in law and finance, and shift the battle from rhetoric to systems, as reported by the Daily Graphic in yesterday’s issue.
Rather than treat this as another of the talks around the campaign, we find the basis for his conviction intriguing.
“At the centre of this recalibrated anti-galamsey strategy is the Blue Water Guards initiative, a programme that marks a decisive break from the ad hoc, politically exposed task forces that defined previous anti-illegal mining campaigns,” the news report said.
It further stated that the new strategy is about “building a sustainable enforcement architecture pivoted on deploying manpower, technology and community-based surveillance”.
From “Operation Cow Leg” to “Operation Vanguard”, the anti-illegal mining campaign since 2018 was spearheaded by special military task forces endowed with intelligence resources, combat strategy, and logistical wherewithal to root out the environmental criminals from the country’s forest reserves and water bodies.
In the latest effort, the National Anti-Illegal Mining Operations Secretariat (NAIMOS) – effectively manned by the military – has taken over the mantle, coordinating activities around the fight against the environmental crime.
The significance of the deployment of the military for the exercise cannot be lost on anyone.
The illegal mining scourge has been mounted by sponsors who have the resources to acquire and maintain gangs with heavy weaponry.
The military, therefore, comes in handy as an appropriate grade squad with the capacity to confront the situation.
While the scale of illegal mining or media reports of it have dropped lately, the fight is far from won, we regret to admit.
To, therefore, put a premium on the Blue Water Guards in the anti-galamsey equation is a vote of confidence we find interesting.
Among the new dynamics introduced by the guards is the fact that they have been absorbed under the Minerals Commission as permanent staff. The permanent employment status is a guaranteed security expected to ward off the temptation to trade national interest for survival perks.
But officials need to be reminded that the various past campaigns against illegal mining were manned by permanent personnel of the security services.
Questions about open compromise and sometimes allegations of direct participation in the illegal mining space undermined the national effort to combat the threat.
Merely absorbing the Blue Water Guards into the mainstream workforce of the Minerals Commission does not mark a substantial departure from previous campaigns.
As a human institution, the Blue Water Guards face similar vulnerabilities as any of the security services personnel.
Sometimes, these vulnerabilities include a threat to life, as has been experienced by some soldiers and policemen who paid the ultimate price in the line of duty.
The operations of the Blue Water Guards must be coordinated along with the activities of NAIMOS and the entire security system towards the common goal of securing the country’s water and forest resources.
The threat posed by galamsey to life is well known to the average person.
The worsening state of the country’s vegetation cover must inspire every necessary action to overcome the crime that has placed every life in the country under threat.
We yearn to see the effective implementation of other measures by the Minerals Commission to achieve the anti-galamsey objectives.
For instance, we want to see how a new “medium-scale mining” category will help to close a long-standing regulatory gap, ensuring that operations in a previously legal grey zone are now captured within a defined framework.
We cannot afford to fail in this effort.
