All Mining Companies In Ghana Must Operate Within The Regulatory Framework

It is said that every cloud has a silver lining. Perhaps that is why out of virtually every disaster some good also emerges. Out of Ibrahim Mahama's current troubles one hopes that Ghanaian society will finally find a way to deal effectively with errant companies in the mining sector, once and for all.

As regards the challenges now facing him, it has now become clear to many fair-minded Ghanaians that the  system is being manipulated by some of the most ruthless of the hardliners in the New Patriotic Party (NPP), to enable them destroy the businesses built up over the years by Ibrahim Mahama. Pity. Talk about greed and envy gone bonkers.

Luckily for our country, their behind-the-scene manuevering has only succeed in bringing into the open (and buried in the deepest recesses of the subconscious minds of many ordinary  Ghanaians) the regulatory requirements that gold mining companies actually have to meet in order to legally obtain mining permits. It will be pretty hard for even the biggest mining companies to fool rural communities ever again. Such is the level of their consciousness today.

Furthermore, members of  the so-called small-scale miners association will now find it rather difficult to dupe the communities in which they operate - as the more responsible sections of the Ghanaian media will always demand that the industry's regulators  ought to ensure that environmentally irresponsible companies clean up their act so to speak: and operate within the sector's regulatory framework going forward into the future.

One also hopes that all sections of the media have duly taken note of all the regulatory requirements outlined yesterday by the deputy minister for lands and natural resources, Hon. Benito Owusu Bio,  which the mining company that Abrahim Mahama's wife is apparently a director of, Exton Cubic Group Limited, is said to have apparently failed to fulfil - thus leading to the company being prevented from entering the concession granted it at Nyinahin.

Henceforth, the media ought to use the selfsame criteria that critics of the government insist are now being used to hound Ibrahim Mahama's company for every mining company operating in Ghana when ascertaining whether or not they are complying with the Minerals and Mining (Amendment ) Law, 2014.

It ought to be noted that the object of passing the Bill into law was to amend the Minerals and Mining Act, 2006 (Act 703) and make the seizure of equipment and accoutrements used by miners possible when they engage in illegal mining.

And when communities affected by mining approach the media for help in fighting errant mining companies,  journalists ought to ensure that the yardstick now being deployed against Exton Cubic Group Limited and Engineers & Planners, are also the selfsame ones  used in ascertaining whether or not such companies are in compliance with all the regulations and laws governing mining in Ghana.

Above all, the media ought to find out precisely how many mining companies (large and small and legal and illegal) in Ghana currently meet all those requirements as we speak - and, on behalf of the good people of Ghana, demand that all categories of mining companies, local and foreign, must be prevented from further degrading the natural environment until all the above requirements - especially ratification by Parliament of mining licenses - are met.

We shall then see whether or not the many rogues in the so-called small-scale mining sector (a misnomer if ever there was one - as mining with excavators is mining on an industrial scale by rogues who invariably always mine far in excess of the stipulated maximum 25 acres allotted to them by regulators) will still continue to agitate for government to let them resume gang-raping Mother Nature again.

To protect the natural environment,  no mining company in Ghana - large or small, foreign or local -  must ever be allowed by society  to flout the regulations and laws contained in the amended Mining Act without the appropriate sanctions being applied by the authorities against them.

Henceforth, the media must ensure that the regulatory bodies compel all mining companies in Ghana to operate strictly within the regulatory framework outlined  in the Minerals and Mining (Amendment) Law, 2014, which amended the Minerals and Mining Act, 2006 (Act 703) to enable the minister for mines to seize the equipment and accoutrement's used by illegal miners. Full stop. Haaba.