Dr. Hannah Bissue, CEO of the Minerals Development Fund Commission, has publicly identified Chairman Owusu Mensah, the New Patriotic Party (NPP) chairman for Manso Nkwanta, as the owner of an illegal mining site operating dangerously close to Atetemu D/A Basic School.
Last week, Dr. Bissue led a task force to clear the illegal mining site, only to find that learning at the school had been disrupted by active excavators working just behind the classrooms.
In an interview with JoyNews monitored by Kumasimail, she stated unequivocally that Chairman Owusu Mensah is responsible for the illegal mining concession near the school.
She emphasized “I am saying this for a two million percent fact. If there is anything like two million percent, I wouldn’t say it if I didn’t know.”
Her statement shines a harsh light on the troubling connection between politics and illegal mining, an issue that has long plagued Ghana’s mining communities.
Dr. Bissue also recounted how attempts by local officials to negotiate with the miners were firmly rejected.
“And whilst we’re there, he got one governor to call us. And what I told them was that we are not here to negotiate anything with them,” she said.
Instead, she insisted that the focus must be on restoring the devastated environment and returning life and safety to the community.
“If there’s anything to negotiate, it’s for the repair and restoration of the ecosystem that they have destroyed in this community and to give the life of this community back to them,” she recounted what transpired.
She condemned the reactive approach to the problem and called for preventive measures to protect communities from the destructive impact of galamsey activities.
“If you are supposed to develop a community, why should you wait for reactive and preventive measures? So, what can we do to prevent this? I was going to take the reactive approach, but where we are right now, you really can’t even determine what is happening on the ground,” Dr. Bissue noted.
Source : www.kumasimail.com /Kwadwo Owusu
