Former President John Agyekum Kufuor has questioned the outcomes of all the interventions made over the years to tackle the growing menace of galamsey activities in the country, involving security services such as the military and the police.
He explained that in the instances of some of these military interventions like the Operation Vanguard and other similar operations, instead of any major outcomes, the people were rather reported to have gone to brutalize the locals.
“Right now, we are criminalizing all these young people and we send soldiers: Vanguard and all these people, they go and molest the locals,” he lamented.
President John Agyekum Kufuor further expressed worry over the fact that it is yet to be known if any of these interventions produced results such as a team returning with pots of gold.
He also wondered if it is the case that these teams do not discover the gold that is mined in these small-scale mining sites or not.
“I haven’t heard of such expeditions coming back with, say a pot of gold back to Bank of Ghana.
“So, what’s happening? Don’t they find the gold? Everywhere we are getting Chinese and you haven’t heard any Chinese people reporting with the gold they got from our lands and waters,” he wondered.
John Agyekum Kufuor was speaking at a Seminar on Reviewing Ghana’s 1992 Constitution, organized by the Institute of Economic Affairs (IEA), at his residence at Peduase, in the Eastern Region.