Ace Anan Ankomah, Convener of Occupy Ghana, has revealed that the government has ignored multiple letters sent to the presidency regarding the illegal mining crisis, including the latest one on September 10, 2024.
Since 2016, Occupy Ghana has consistently raised concerns about the devastating impact of galamsey on Ghana’s environment and water bodies through formal communications, but these warnings have gone unheeded.
Speaking in an interview with Bernard Avle on Channel One TV’s The Point of View on Monday, the renowned legal practitioner expressed his disappointment, emphasizing that the situation could have been mitigated had the government taken their recommendations seriously.
He warned of the impending ecological, food, and health crises facing the country due to the unchecked spread of illegal mining, stressing the urgent need for action.
Ankomah advocated for the confiscation of lands used for galamsey operations, calling for decisive measures to prevent further environmental and societal damage.
He urged the government to act swiftly to address the crisis and avert catastrophic consequences
“In 2022 alone, we wrote to the president [Akufo-Addo] every week, for eight weeks. On 10th September 2024, we repeated our call. But let’s start from 28th September 2022, we wrote an open letter to the president, saying that this galamsey thing is a problem, put your foot down.
“3rd October 2022, we wrote a reminder one. This is the one that asked that they declare a state of emergency. 10th October 2022, the next week, we wrote reminder two, pointing out the imminent ecological and food disasters.”
He further recounted, “17th October 2022, the next week, we wrote a reminder three, this is where we advocated for confiscating of galamsey lands. 24th October 2022, we wrote reminder 4, in which we specifically asked the government to take action on the Akonta Mining issue. We were specific, no response, no action.
“31st October 2022, reminder five, which we call reminder of reminders, no response. 7th November 2022, where we pointed to an imminent health disaster. When we pointed to what we had seen about deformed children and everything, no response.
“The last one is charity begins at home, November 16, 2022, they didn’t respond. So, our last one, we repeated our call to halt it, which is 10th September 2024. This is just our engagement with the presidency.
“There’s no acknowledgement of receipts, and there’s no action [from presidency]. Sometimes we rule out the fact that we’re ignored all of these years.”
