{"id":360150,"date":"2017-10-09T16:30:24","date_gmt":"2017-10-09T16:30:24","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/citifmonline.com\/?p=360150"},"modified":"2017-10-09T16:30:24","modified_gmt":"2017-10-09T16:30:24","slug":"we-want-to-join-anti-galamsey-taskforce-small-scale-miners","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/2017\/10\/we-want-to-join-anti-galamsey-taskforce-small-scale-miners\/","title":{"rendered":"We want to join anti-galamsey taskforce – Small-Scale miners"},"content":{"rendered":"
The Ghana National Association of Small-Scale Miners, is imploring the government to include some of its members in the anti-illegal mining task-force, Operation Vanguard.<\/p>\n
The General Secretary of the Association,\u00a0Godwin Armah, explained that their members know the schemes of illegal miners and where they operate, hence their involvement will be of great benefit to the task-force.<\/p>\n
He made the comments after a meeting with the Lands and Natural Resources Minister, John Peter Amewu on Thursday, October 5.\u00a0 Top on the agenda of the meeting was a dialogue on a road-map that will lead to the lifting of the ban on all forms of small-scale mining.<\/p>\n
[contextly_sidebar id=”sHEg1g25cQYqGLpGW7nOGHe3rqKQvUgv”]Speaking to the media, Mr. Armah pledged the\u00a0Association’s support to government\u2019s fight against illegal mining adding that they will in three days present a plan and budget to the lands minister.<\/p>\n
He said: \u201cthe miners are very familiar with their terrain and can, therefore, fish out the illegal miner. We will automatically kick them out as we\u2019ve been doing but our absence now is giving them that leeway to be working. Note that Operation Vanguard is not working in the night; they are always working during the daytime because of security reasons and also there are remote areas that these guys are operating. We know these areas very well known and can, therefore, apprehend them and hand them over to the Operation Vanguard.<\/p>\n
Mr. Armah added that: \u201cOperation Vanguard team rotates the military men, every month. So once you\u2019re able to acquaint yourself with the terrain before you know it, one month is up and you need to be rotated. This is one of the disadvantages. Also, they are visible, once they are coming you see \u2018Operation Vanguard\u2019 on their vehicles with their tags. So those dredgers what they do is they allow people to sit by the roadside as informants for them so once they see Vanguard heading towards their direction they call them and before they get there and then before they get there those people would have bolted. This is a huge challenge so it is really making it difficult for Vanguard to operate.\u00a0 We are already on the field so once we identify them; we will quickly call the taskforce to arrest them, or we will arrest them. ”<\/p>\n