The National Coordinator for Ghana Landscape Restoration and Small Scale Mining Project (GLRSSMP) Dr. John Kingsley Krugu has said, the era cumbersome and difficult process of acquiring a mining license is gone.
Speaking on Ngamegbulam Chidozie Stephen Apexnews Ghana’s flagship developmental programme dubbed “SPEAKOUT UPPER EAST” on Tuesday, September 27, 2022, the Dr. Krugu, the move is a long-term sustainable intervention that the government brought on board.
Giving little history the how it started, Dr. said: “If you remember when his Excellency took in his second term, he called for a national dialogue, and Hon. Samuel Abu Jinapor took it up and organize those dialogue and one of the key findings that came out of that dialogue was that a lot of people want to get licenses to do small-scale mining but because the process of getting those licenses are cumbersome and difficult, which is one of the reasons people will go and do it illegal and if you look at it, it makes sense that Stephen, if you were to wake up one day and they tell you behind your back yard there is gold and you need money and then, you looked at this gold and somebody say no, you have to go through a very long process in order to get a license to back and mine that gold, I think rationally, what you would do is to get a pickaxe and start digging. So, that finding came out from the national dialogue and the regional dialogue”.
He said: “one of the orders that were given to us is to simplify the process of Ghanaians getting a license. The interesting thing is that small-scale mining is only the preserve of Ghanaians. No foreigner can get a small-scale mining license. So, the demand we have was to work out to simplify that process so that every single Ghanaian who wants to engage in small-scale mining activities can get the license and once you get the license, then you come under the regulation of the Mineral Commission, you come under the regulation of Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), you come under the supervision of Water Resources Commission and all of that will prevent what we are seeing and we are not all happy”.
We have worked to already simplify that, the Mineral Commission has done a very fantastic job and with support from my office, recently I was in Bolga where we trained small-scale miners on how any Ghanaian can sit in the comfort of their home as long as they have access to the internet whether, on their phone or laptop, they can apply and get a license and do mining.
Right now as we speak, you can go to the Mineral Commission website, there is a link called the MINING CADASTRE ADMINISTRATION SYSTEM (MCAS) and if you click it, it will take you to a place that says APPLY. He explained
“When we finish this, one more step and we call it a one-stop shop. We want to put the EPA, Water Resources, and Mineral Commission all on that Common platform. So, in the future, there will be no need of carrying files from one Agency to another. All of that discourages people from doing the right thing”. He revealed
So, that is the kind of long-term sustainable intervention that the government is doing, with a such move, in 10 years’ time, we don’t need to come back and talk about the issue we are talking about.
Source: Apexnewsgh.com|Ghana
For publication please kindly contact us on 0256336062 or Email: apexnewsgh@gmail.com
