Galamsey Fight: We Won’t Be Fooled Again – NPP’s Kate Gyamfua On Vote-Risking

Kate Gyamfua, the National Women’s Organizer of the ruling New Patriotic Party, has taken aim at critics who want the government to outlaw small-scale mining as a means of combating galamsey in this country.

She additionally denounced the opposition National Democratic Congress (NDC) for their calls for expelling miners from the sites using military force.

In addition to cautioning the government against being duped into using military force to apprehend miners, Mrs. Kate Gyamfua added that the move would cause the New Patriotic Party to lose votes in the upcoming 2024 general elections scheduled for December 7.

She made this statement at the 2024 Eastern Regional Women’s Wing Conference held in Akwatia.

She feels that her party suffered significant electoral losses in the 2020 presidential and parliamentary elections as a result of the way their administration handled the miners regarding the fight against galamsey ( illigal mining) during their first term in office.

The government is not going to fall into a trap set by the opposition to create a political crisis by using military force or place ban on mining.

She claims that the NDC has renewed its propaganda in the months leading up to elections, believing the NPP to be too naive to fall into their trap again.

Mrs. Kate emphatically stated that the military will never be used to pursue miners, not today nor tomorrow.
However, she urged miners to keep Ghanaians in mind and take care not to damage the land or waterways while mining.

 

Listen to the audio below

 

 

The gov’t ban on small-scale mining

It will be recalled prior to the 2020 general election that the NPP government, in an effort to combat Galamsey, imposed a six-month moratorium on all mining activities until further notice. However, the ban was later extended, suggesting that the intended outcomes had not yet been realized.

The anti-galamsey task-force was deployed to three regions; Ashanti, Western and Eastern to help fight and sustain the campaign against illegal mining.

However, this is despite the appeals of licensed small-scale miners who claim that the prohibition is adversely hurting their ability to make a living at the time in question.

The former President and then flagbearer of the National Democratic Congress, John Dramani Mahama, criticized the New Patriotic Party government for its inhumane approach to dealing with illegal small-scale mining in the country.

According to him, the government’s deployment of a joint police and military task force to rid the country of the illegal small-scale miners is counterproductive.

Some political observers speculated that the NPP government’s strategy for fighting Galamsey was the reason why the party lost a significant number of parliamentary seats in mining areas after the election.

The Galamsey issue has resurfaced ahead of 2024, with labor unions, religious leaders, senior imams, health and teachers unions, and media outlets urging the government to impose a mining ban in order to combat canker.

 

 

 

 

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