The first-time MP, is a Deputy Minister of Lands and Natural Resources.

[contextly_sidebar id=”o2Z0QAWICMWpCH4exCaXLZlYUtTpVU4y”]The miners expressed their anger when the Sector Minister, Mr John Peter Amewu, led a team to visit some mining sites in the Western Region on Sunday.

The visit followed the expiration of the three-week ultimatum the Minister gave to all illegal miners to evacuate their equipment and leave mining sites.

James Adu told the GNA that, 90 per cent of the youth in the town depend on illegal mining, otherwise known as galamsey, for their livelihoods; therefore, halting it would throw them out of business.

He said he owned four excavators and employed other people to do illegal mining.

Nana Akyea, also an illegal miner, said before the 2016 general election, the then opposition New Patriotic Party assured them that when it assumed the reins of government, it would encourage mining, hence the youth in the area voted massively for the MP and President Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo.

Nana Abban, another illegal miner, said the alternative livelihood programme the government would like to introduce would not be sustainable.

He said mining was the preferred business for most of the youth, therefore the government must put measures in place to absorb them into the mainstream mining.

He said he had used proceeds from mining to support his younger siblings in school and that also sustain his family.

Illegal mining has polluted water bodies and degraded the vegetation.

The Media Coalition comprising major media houses in the country have launched an anti-galamsey campaign to galvanize public support against the menace.

The government has given its support to clamp down on illegal mining, and sustain the fight for the next five years.

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Source: GNA

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Former President Mahama is coming off the worst election defeat of a sitting president in Ghana’s democracy, where he recorded 44.40 percent of valid votes cast, losing to the New Patriotic Party’s Nana Akufo-Addo, who was endorsed by 53.85 percent of the electorate.

Despite the election defeat, Ras Mubarak said John Mahama is a tried and tested option for the NDC, following his election victory in 2012.

“In the next election, I do not see any other candidate who can best lead us to victory other than John Dramani Mahama. He has been there; he knows what we need to do to get it right.”

“The rank and file and a majority of people I have spoken to are all eagerly awaiting to have President Mahama on the NDC’s ticket in 2020, and I think he would be very exciting. I think he is the only candidate who can get us the victory,” Mr. Mubarak said.

Without explicitly endorsing the former President for 2020, the NDC MP for Wa Central, Rashid Pelpuo, also said he had enjoyed John Mahama’s Presidency, adding that “I think he did well and I believe that given the chance, he would have done even better than he did.”

Ghanaians will regret voting out ‘a pearl like John Mahama’ – Pelpuo

There has been roughly a month of introspection after the NDC’s defeat in the 2016 general elections, and Mr. Pelpuo also believes Ghanaians may have taken John Mahama for granted.

“Ghanaians will regret, possibly, for throwing away a pearl like John Mahama”, the legislator said in an interview with Citi News’ Richard Dela Sky minutes after the expiration of the sixth Parliament of Ghana’s fourth Republic in the early hours of January 7.

The Flagbearer of the NDC for election 2020 is likely to be decided on after the party’s national congress which its General Secretary, Johnson Asiedu Nketia, has indicated will be in 2018.

That congress is also expected to allow the executives to devise strategies towards the 2020 elections after it lost by a little over one million votes in the 2016 elections.

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By: Delai Adogla-Bessa/citifmonline.com/Ghana

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