The Media Coalition Against Illegal Mining has called on the John Dramani Mahama led government to expand its excavator tracking system nationwide to strengthen the fight against illegal mining.
Convenor of the Coalition, Dr Ken Ashigbey made during a visit by the group together with A Rocha Ghana to the Ghana Mine Repository and Tracking Control Centre on Wednesday 7, May, 2025.
The centre is a facility dedicated to monitoring the movement of earth-moving equipment within mining concessions.
According to Dr. Ken Ashigbey, the urgent nationwide rollout of the tracking system would significantly enhance efforts to curb the menace.
“These excavators are not mobile phones you can put in your pocket. With this tracking and all of that, the police will then be able to monitor its activities. If your excavator is not meant for a particular activity, and you get to the barrier, the police should be able to tell based on the QR code that you have on your vehicle.
“So, we have everything that we need to deal with this terrorism that is going on. I think the major call to the minister and the CEO is to be able to scale this up,” he stated.
In a related development, President Mahama has reaffirmed his government’s commitment to ending mining activities in the country’s forest reserves.
Updating the nation of the progress made so far with his 120 Day social contract with citizens, Mr Mahama announced plans to amend the Minerals and Mining Act, 2003 (Act 703) to permanently outlaw such operations.
He outlined a comprehensive strategy aimed at sanitising the mining sector, including legal reforms, enforcement action, and land reclamation efforts.
“The first 120 days, we’ve taken decisive action through a five-point strategy to overhaul and sanitise the mining sector. This includes regulatory reforms and strengthening law enforcement, including joint task forces, arrest and seizure of mining equipment, stakeholder collaboration, and reclamation of degraded lands.
“Seven out of nine reserves have been reclaimed, and illegal miners have been flushed out of these forest reserves,” Mahama said.
He said that as part of this initiative, the legislative instrument (L.I) 2462 was presented to Parliament on March 20, 2025, to amend the Environmental Protection (Mining in Forest Reserves) Regulations.
The amendment removes the president’s discretionary power to permit mining in forest reserves.
“Concerning the ban on mining in forest reserves, on March 20, 2025, a legislative instrument L.I. 2462 was presented to Parliament to amend the Environmental Protection (Mining in Forest Reserves) Regulation. This amendment removes the president’s power to approve mining in forest reserves,” he explained.
