The traditional authorities and the ‘Concerned Citizens of Asante Mampong Against Galamsey’ are up in arms against the Minerals Commission recently granting a license to Active Target Mineral Resources to mine gold in the Asante Mampong Traditional Area.
They say they are particularly disappointed and mad at the Minerals Commission for its infamous desire to clandestinely “rope [the] Asante Mampong Traditional Area into the arena of galamsey (illegal mining), which had already ravaged many communities in the country,” more so when Daasebre Osei Bonsu II, Mamponghene, had protested against an earlier prospecting license and got it withdrawn.
Addressing a press conference at Mampong last Wednesday amidst chanting of traditional war songs, a leading member of the group, Mr. Victor Owusu, lamented that the Commission did not engage the people, especially the traditional authorities, as stakeholders in any form or do any due diligence to effect surface mining operations in rivers and water bodies within the Asante Mampong enclave.
Clad in red and black attire with red armbands and headgears, Mr. Owusu said: “The careless abandon with which the Minerals Commission grants mineral rights to prospectors without recourse to the interest of the communities, in our view, smacks of an irresponsible organisation battering the lives of people without shame or feeling of guilt.”
He said this posture of the Commission for prospectors “to get gold at all costs, regardless of the interests of the communities,” contradicts its own requirement to create a congenial atmosphere in which all stakeholders work as partners in a safe environment to achieve sustainable development through mining.
Mr. Owusu said what was more worrying was that the operational area of the company that was granted the mineral rights would have encompassed most of the rivers and streams, the confluence of which the Ghana Water Company Limited (GWCL) dam at Mampong was located, which provides water for the multiple educational institutions in the Mampong Municipality, Nsuta and Kwamang communities.
He mentioned about ten rivers and streams in the traditional area that would be adversely polluted by the mining activities, and stated that it was their “responsibility to protect our naturally bequeathed forests and water bodies, and ensure that the quality of the resources which also belong to succeeding generations, as a matter of birth rights, is not compromised or abused by greedy galamseyers (illegal miners) and their collaborators.”
“If we cannot improve upon what we came to meet, we dare not make it worse than what was handed over to us by our forebears,” he stressed, and added that the press conference by the Concerned Citizens against Galamsey in the Mampong Traditional Area was a “tacit endorsement and support for one earlier on undertaken by [the] Mampong Traditional Council, headed by Daasebre Osei Bonsu II, the Mamponghene.”
Mr. Victor Owusu described as laughable that the Mineral Commission “will grant the company which was registered in September 2022 with a declared capital of GH¢100,000, which is just about US$7,000, [a] license to mine gold in the Asante Mampong area, which was an indication that the company was not coming to do any meaningful work,” and said they “wonder how the Minerals Commission went ahead to grant such a company with a meagre stated capital to prospect for gold in the traditional area.”
Nana Boakye Yiadom Atonsah, Mampong Gyasehene, who represented Daasebre Osei Bonsu II, Mamponghene, said Daasebre and the Traditional Council were vehemently opposed to illegal mining and would never endorse or support the menace.
He said the disadvantages of galamsey far outweighed the good sides of it, and called on the residents to be vigilant and look out for any group of people who would want to operate galamsey in any community within the area.
Nana Asamoah Marfo, Aduanahene of Mampong, on his part, remarked that illegal mining had destroyed economic lives and activities in various communities across the country, and Mampong citizens would, therefore, not wait for a similar thing to happen to their communities.
From Thomas Agbenyegah Adzey, Asante Mampong
