Francesco Holecz (4th left) and Prof. Boateng in a group photograph with the trainees
Government is set to deploy a Swiss satellite technology to monitor illegal mining activities across Ghana.
The synthetic aperture radar remote sensing (SARRS) technology helps to generate satellite imagery and sensors under extreme weather conditions.
The technology is expected to be deployed in Ghana by April this year, following the signing of a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) in June last year between government and the Environmental Protection Pollution Monitoring Consortium of Switzerland.
The consortium would undertake an earth observation project that aims at reducing the negative effect of illegal mining in Ghana.
The planned deployment of the technology forms part of measures being taken by the Inter-Ministerial Committee on Illegal Mining (IMCIM) to regularise and reform the activities of small scale miners.
Fourteen officials from the Environmental Protection Agency, Minerals Commission, Forestry Commission have undergone a three-day training to get hands-on and practical experience in remote sensing techniques for processing sentinel 1 SAR data and its application in the mining activities.
Chairman of the Inter-ministerial Committee on Illegal Mining, Prof. Frimpong Boateng, told journalists at the end of the training programme Thursday in Accra that Ghana now has the technology to monitor illegal mining activities, no matter what the weather condition might be.
Prof. Boateng, who is the Minister of Environment, Science, Technology & Innovation, said the satellite could be used by other government agencies and departments like the Forestry Commission, Town and Country Planning Department to observe activities that degrade the environment.
He said Ghana would be using SARRS technology for about two years free of charge.
Francesco Holecz, an official of Sarmap, the Swiss company owning SARS, pointed out that the technology would be operated by the European Space Agency.
He added that with the deployment of the technology, there would be regular monitoring of artisanal mining activities.
According to him, the technology would be used to help show where changes occur in artisanal mining.
BY Melvin Tarlue