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The Akufo Addo administration is beating a quick retreat from its anti-illegal mining (Galamsey) fight with plans to disband the disgraced Inter-Ministerial Committee on Illegal Mining (IMCIM) chaired by Professor Kwabena Frimpong Boateng.
The General Secretary of the governing New Patriotic Party (NPP), John Boadu, who has been fingered as one of the illegal miners, gave the hint on Thursday.
“The last time Cabinet met, they realized that the Inter-Ministerial Committee on Illegal Mining is almost done with its work. We expect the government to announce the end of the role and handover to the Lands and Natural Resources Ministry. It is something that has been discussed and it will be done soon. The committee will be dissolved soon,” he said.
However, this plan to disband the IMCIM is curiously coming a few days after the massive scandal revealing that members of the committee were operating a mafia-style system where they were chasing off illegal miners and supplanting ownership of the galamsey concessions with government appointees and ruling party executives.
The committee is made up of Ministers from Environment, Science, Technology and Innovation (MESTI), Lands and Natural Resources (MLNR), Local Government and Rural Development (MLGRD), Chieftaincy & Religious Affairs, Regional Re-Organisation and Development, Monitoring and Evaluation, Water and Sanitation, Interior and Defence and Information ministries.
A few days ago, a secret video recording capturing Prof. Frimpong Boateng confirming that illegal mining excavators seized from mostly Chinese miners were being distributed to government appointees and party executives such as John Boadu and the Ashanti Regional Chairman of the ruling party, Bernard Antwi Boasiako (Wuntumi).
Last year, the Secretary to the IMCIM, Charles Cromwell Bissue was secretly recorded serving as a facilitator for an illegal gold mining company set up as a dummy to catch him in the act.
There are also reports that former Lands and Mineral Resource Minister, Peter Amewu is a beneficiary of over 20 excavators in a list of scandals that have proven the complete failure of the Akufo Addo administration to tackle illegal mining operations in the country as President Akufo Addo vowed to do immediately he was sworn in in 2017.
In his 2017 glowing words of determination to tackle the galamsey menace, President Akufo Addo stated: “You know that the activities that they are involved in [Galamsey] are jeopardising the very survival of our nation. I took a decision that that will be a betrayal of the trust that the Ghanaian people put in me on the 7th of January this year (2017), as a result, we established this committee within the government (IMCIM)…. I am prepared to put my presidency on the line on this matter…,”he told a group of Chiefs.
After this announcement, a military task force called Operation Vanguard was constituted to chase out the heavily armed illegal miners. However, as it turned out from recent revelations, the taskforce they only chased out these miners to allow appointees and officials of the ruling party to take over the mines that have continued to destroy massive swathe of forest reserves and rivers in the entire country.
“We said it over again that using the military to fight the problem is not the solution and the government did not adhere to what we were trying to say. Now that at least we have had evidence from all that we were saying, it is a lesson to them. And it is a lesson to the subsequent government. The problem is a very complex one and if you do not understand the problem, that is when you make mistakes like what we have done,” said Michael Kwadwo Peprah, the President of the Concerned Small Scale Miners Union (CSSMU).