Report by Nana POKU
The Chief Executive Officer of the Forestry Commission, Mr John Allotey has declared that no one is permitted to do small-scale mining in Ghana’s forests.
Mr Allotey made this statement when the Minister of Lands and Natural Resources met the Press at the conference room of the Ministry of Information to give an account of the state of our forest cover in the country.
The CEO indicated that until recently there was no mining in the forest areas in Ghana. But in 1997, licenses were issued to 30 mining companies for prospecting and exploration in the forest. Thereafter, 22 of these companies were given permission and started doing underground mining in the forest, and not on a small scale.
He said small scale mining began with some local implements to scoop minerals from river banks and surface of the earth. So the forest was a no go area. This culminated in the engagement of big mining companies like Newmont, Ashanti Gold, Goldfields, and other mining companies, etc doing responsible mining in the forests.
He warned that the Forestry Commission is against all forms of small scale mining in the forest areas of the country and would not sit idle to let this canker fester and blow over. He bemoaned the widespread mining trenches that are prevalent in some parts of Ashanti and the two Western Regions in the country serving as death trap to their guards.
He specifically mentioned the Bekwai, Sewhi Wiaso and Tarkwa areas that have this illegal mining menace. The depth of the trenches according to him is as deep as 300 metres and are left uncovered.
Again he stated that the practice of illegal lumbering, agricultural shifting cultivation, bush fires, springing up of new towns and villages as well as roads, dams and bridge construction has drastically reduced the forest to about 40% of its initial cover.
The commission according to him is training forest guards to contain these illegal miners who wield AK47s that travel over 3 kilometers as against the guards who use pump action guns that travel about 300-400 meters.
In this regard, about 900 hundred Forestry Guards are being trained at Asutsuare in the Eastern Region by the Ghana Armed Forces (GAF) to counter these illegal miners and loggers who operate mostly at night.
He outlined some measures put in place to resuscitate the degraded forest. He mentioned that Ghana has about 6.4 million hectares of forest as against 4.3 in 2019. To this end his outfit is doing everything to check the illegal practices and all man-made challenges as well as through other various interventions.
