Joseph Yammin
The fight against illegal mining or galamsey is nowhere near being won. While we are as a people paying lip-service to the fight, the negative fallouts in the form of environmental degradation continue to be witnessed across the gold-bearing parts of the country.
The abandoned pits by galamseyers continue to swallow innocent lives as water bodies lose their quality.
So-called anti-galamsey taskforces have been created including a joke called Blue Water Guards. The duplication of efforts at fighting the illegality is adequate testament to the fact that victory is out of the reach of the authorities.
Time was it when two of the parallel so-called anti-galamsey taskforces clashed over authority. One was created at the ruling party headquarters and the other outside it, perhaps under the aegis of National Security apparatus.
Excavators, when they are seized from galamsey sites and parked at municipal or district assembly compounds, soon vanish. Indeed, only powerful persons can order the movement of the earthmoving equipment.
One of the most compelling revelations to have hit the public space in recent times was the disclosures from the National Organiser of the National Democratic Congress (NDC), Joseph Yammin.
Those who read or even listened to him were stunned by the magnitude of his revelation or situation report on illegal mining in the country.
The taskforces created to thwart the efforts of the illegal miners, according to him, were rather extorting monies from legally registered miners, making them money-making ventures.
That is a mind-blowing revelation from an insider. When the crocodile comes to the banks of the river to narrate a situation at the bottom, who can discount the details?
Yammin has spoken and this only enhances our stance that galamsey cannot be won, not under the current crop of people at the helm.
The NDC National Organiser, according to the report, has asked the President to disband the taskforces whose membership are only making monies for themselves.
It does not look like his word would be taken because he himself is a suspect, the President having earlier demanded that he and another leading personality of the party be probed because of their alleged involvement in galamsey activities.
The galamsey menace as a full blown political issue is protected by the leadership of the party. It was used to campaign for the ruling party when it was in opposition.
It would be near impossible therefore to ask those who were given a subtle assurance that when the then opposition NDC comes to power it was going to release those in prison over illegal mining activities among other sugar-coated promises, to abandon the money-making enterprise.
The swiftness with which illegal miners turned to the fields and water bodies when the batons of authority changed hands, says it all about their dreams coming true.
It will be interesting to find out the reason behind Yammin’s disclosure about extortion on the part of the taskforces. Could it be driven by a raging turf war?