Flagbearer of the National Democratic Congress(NDC) former President John Dramani Mahama has pledged to release Ghanaians imprisoned for engaging in ‘galamsey’ if he wins the presidential election this December, noting that he believes the imprisoned galamseyers have shown enough remorse for their crimes.
Mr Mahama stressed that it is curious that whereas Ghanaian ‘galamseyers’ are languishing in jail, a Chinese galamsey queen, Aisha Huang, who was arrested, never got prosecuted but was merely deported by the government.
Mr Mahama made this known when he spoke to the chiefs and people of Adum Banso in the Western Region, Thursday October 22, 2020 as part of his campaign tour of the region.
“It’s sad! The government said it was fighting galamsey. And they arrested, prosecuted, and jailed Ghanaians who were engaged in that activity but left the Chinese woman[ Aisha Huang]…
“Today, they[ Ghanaians] are still in prison. That Chinese galamsey-queen was arrested but left to go free. She was never prosecuted but our people are in jail suffering,” he lamented.
He then promised to give grant the jailed illegal small scale miners amnesty: “When we come, we shall grant all those arrested and jailed some amnesty. They will come back to their homes and work. I believe that they have suffered enough; shown remorse for whatever wrong they committed.”
He explained that the next NDC government under his leadership have plans to ensure that the operations of small scale miners do not negatively impact the environment.
“We have instituted measures to check the operations of small scale mining,” he pledged.
Background
In August 2017, the government of President Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo launched the ‘Operation Vanguard’, a police and military team to scale up efforts to rid the country of illegal small scale mining activities, commonly referred to as galamsey.
Earlier that year, Ms Aisha Huang had been arrested for engaging in galamsey in some forest reserves in the Ashanti Region. She was put before court but later deported under controversial circumstances.
Senior Minister Yaw Osafo-Maafo will later justify the much-criticised deportation, saying that jailing her was unnecessary and would not have inured to the benefit of Ghana, especially its relationship with China. However, President Akufo-Addo later described the deportation as a mistake.
Meanwhile the galamsey fight has not been altogether successful even though some gains have been made.
