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Mr John - Peter Amewu, Minister Designate for Lands & Natural Resources at the vetting committee
Mr John - Peter Amewu, Minister Designate for Lands & Natural Resources at the vetting committee

‘Government will streamline activities of illegal miners’

The Minister-designate for Lands and Natural Resources, Mr John-Peter Amewu, has given an assurance that the government will streamline the activities of illegal miners (galamsey) to make their operations more decent.

He said the government would transform their operations to migrate them into a more formal process, warning that those who would resist any move to be transformed risked sanctions.

Mr Amewu, who was responding to questions from the Appointments Committee of Parliament last Tuesday, said the government of the New Patriotic Party (NPP) was committed to sanitising galamsey.

Responding to questions on a wide range of issues, he spoke against allowing portions of forest reserves to be used for mining purposes and cautioned that such acts had implications for the country.

For him, it was important to maintain the country’s forests to preserve wildlife, for which reason he called for an amendment of the policy that allowed portions of the forests to be used for mining for the practice to stop.

Land administration

With phase two of the Land Administration Project (LAP) over, Mr Amewu expressed the view that phase three of the project, if introduced, would facilitate land title registration in Ghana, noting that currently, funding was a challenge.

He expressed optimism that the third phase of the LAP would enhance its operations.

The minister-designate said the government would bring about reforms in land ownership in a manner that would bring about fair competition in the acquisition of land.

Minerals Development Fund

Mr Amewu expressed concern that currently the law on the Minerals Development Fund was not really enforced and gave an assurance that if approved as a minister, he would ensure that the fund was given the needed meaning to function.

He assured the citizenry that the government would ensure that every Ghanaian had mining rights in a transparent manner.

He called for the decentralisation of the Minerals Commission to the district level for effective monitoring and evaluation to reduce needless litigation.

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