The former Chairman of the Inter-Ministerial Committee on Illegal Mining (IMCIM), Professor Kwabena Frimpong-Boateng says until the agitations of some ‘big companies’ sponsored by some ‘big men’ in the country, the fight against illegal mining was yielding the desired results.
According to him, the IMCIM under his leadership, made significant progress in addressing the issue of the menace in Ghana. However, their efforts were hindered when powerful individuals and big companies began interfering.
Professor Frimpong Boateng explained that the IMCIM developed a software called Galamstop, which facilitated the registration and licensing of small-scale miners to enable them to obtain their licenses within three months if all requirements were met.
“We developed software which we call galamstop that will aid in the registration of licenses. And the software was so good that if a miner started the process at Minerals Commission, it will trigger the process in the other regulatory agencies like EPA, Water Resources Commission and Forestry Commission so that within three months they should get their licenses if everything went well.”
“We took about 4,000 of them to Tarkwa to study sustainable mining. And so after all these things we were able to vet them and make sure that we registered their companies and everything went well. So within about six to nine months, the period that they were asked not to work, we were able to register some of them, license thousands of them and they went back to work. And they were working very well, nobody was harassing them because they were doing things very well.”
He added that illegal mining was not limited to small-scale miners but also involved large companies with significant influence.
The former Minister of Environment, Science, Technology, and Innovation (MESTI) is facing corruption and corruption-related charges during his tenure at the IMCIM after his arrest by the Office of the Special Prosecutor (OSP) on May 16, 2023, and has since been granted a GH¢5 million bail.
