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One of the near solutions to illegal mining activities the country has seen was the deployment of the military to enforce the law and stop illegalities in the mining regions in the early 2000s.

The deployment and the fact that military personnel are in charge with all jungle skills will make venturing into the concessions of mining companies, cocoa farms, rubber plantations or illegally mining on water bodies and forest reserves unattractive to galamseyers.

The withdrawal of the military for unexplained reasons after 2017 till date has led to a high level of impunity, which made it easy for a group of illegal miners to attack mines, terrorise communities and cause havoc.

These unregulated, uncontrolled, high impunity and disrespect for law and order, show of power by armed illegal miners have become a major threat to sustainability, lives and property.

It is threatening the country's water supply, cocoa and rubber production and Ghana risks international ban, as cocoa; one of Ghana’s main export commodities risks being banned and COCOBOD sounded the alarm long ago but no one is listening.

Legislation passed in December by the EU Parliament sought to ban some commodities linked to deforestation, including cocoa, coffee, soya among others and Ghana which is the second-largest producer of cocoa beans globally after its neighbour Cote d’Ivoire with more than 800,000 farmer-families account for its output.

The country’s annual production has averaged 800,000 metric tonnes in the last decade, with most of it exported in a raw state to the EU and other markets.

Considering its importance to the economy, few illegal miners should not be allowed to unleash the avoidable terror on the country.
 
Aside from that, not long ago a group of miners, mostly migrants from other parts of the country, Nigerian and others, attacked the Benso operations of Golden Star Wassa Limited (GSWL) and destroyed properties worth several millions of dollars and halted the operations of the company until recently.
 
Military, Chamber partnership
Several vehicles – pickup trucks, tipper trucks, excavators and an ambulance – were destroyed with some offices burnt down by the attackers.

In the early 2000s there was an arrangement between the mines and the Ministry of Defence through the Chamber of Mines, dubbed “Operation Calm Life”.

Those arrangements brought some sanity in the mining space.

However, in the absence of the joint military/police force, illegal miners – most of them migrants – had moved in, mobilised and attacked operational areas and offices.

Paramount Queenmother of the Wassa Fiase Traditional Area, Nana Afuaba Kunaadjoa II, therefore appealed to the security agencies to flush out illegal miners who have invaded the area and unleashing terror in the mining area.

The call
The call by the Queenmother is important owing to the fact that if the mining companies have been so important in the current economic recovery effort through revenue and the gold for oil arrangement, then their protection from attacks by illegal miners should be important to the state.

With the declaration on many platforms that the government is not against mining, but wants responsible and sustainable mining, one would have expected that with the introduction of the community-mining programme, young people interested in the mining would have availed themselves of the opportunity.
 
 The community-mining programme came with the government's resolve to deploy technology for mining to be done responsibly.

However, halting “Operation Calm Life” altogether had opened the floodgates for illegal miners to regroup and fester.

 The queenmother suggested the deployment of the military to provide security for mining firms. 

“Let me put it on record that those who led the destruction of offices, 12 vehicles, heavy duty trucks, pickup trucks, ambulances and an excavator, and the smashing of the windscreens of 22 trucks were not indigenes of Wassa Fiase,” the queen mother said.

Nana Kunaadjoa said: “These people arrive every day in their numbers, and join those on the ground to mine illegally.”

Her community is not fighting with the mines. 
 
The population
She added that the population of the illegal miners kept increasing daily, and that their illegal mining activities resulted in massive destruction of the environment, including forests and water bodies, with impunity, and social vices with the potential to corrupt the young people in the area.

“Originally, we are farmers and traders, and our youth do not engage in these illegalities.

We must not allow the migrants we welcome into our midst to act with impunity as though we do not have laws in the country.

Where we have reached now, the only option is to flush them out with the help of the security agencies,” she said.

An elder of the traditional area, Nana Kofi Bosompim, said until recently, gold could be picked from the floor at Benso, but the emergence of illegal mining had changed the narrative.

He explained that when the mines stopped operating in the area about 10 years ago, it was a source of worry to the traditional area because the youth lost their jobs.

“But for the company to return and be met with this level of angry migrants who have grouped and arrogated powers to themselves and causing such destruction to the environment and private property is unfortunate,” he stressed.
 

Operations restart
The Group Corporate Affairs Manager of Golden Star, Gerard Boakye, explained “we decided to temporarily halt our operations in the area in 2012 for some time owing to a fall in gold prices on the international market.

“But after the new owners took over, we decided to revisit our operations at Benso where we have engaged the communities and spoken to them.

The community welcomed us owing to the benefits to them in terms of jobs and other forms of support,” he said.

The activities of the illegal miners, he said, occurred within the company’s concession where Golden Star legally operates, and that the illegal miners had invaded the pit and its buffer, and refused to adhere to warnings to move from the area.

“Our operations and other activities involving all stakeholders were peaceful until the migrants emerged and started illegal mining activities, as well as entering our concessions and being confrontational, leading to the destruction we are seeing today,” he said.

 Mr Boakye said the attack on its employees and offices at Benso by a group of armed illegal miners had halted their Benso operations, which, he said, would have serious financial implications for restoration as a result of the incident.