State failure, not GoldBod, driving galamsey – Daryl Bosu

The Deputy National Director of A Rocha Ghana, Daryl Bosu, has said illegal small-scale mining, popularly known as galamsey, will persist as long as the state fails to address its underlying causes.

He argued that the increasing international price of gold and the government’s failure to enforce existing laws against illegal mining and its facilitators were more fundamental concerns than the establishment of the Ghana Gold Board (GoldBod).

Bosu made the remarks at a press conference in Accra on Friday, October 16, while addressing escalating human rights violations in mining-affected communities.

He was responding to a question on whether GoldBod’s activities had contributed to the worsening galamsey menace.

“For as long as the prices of gold on international market are increasing, whether there is GoldBod or there is no GoldBod, and for as long as the government is not very proactive in dealing with galamsey, galamsey will continue,” he said.

Bosu stressed that the state had failed to effectively implement laws intended to hold people who facilitate illegal mining accountable.

He cited provisions of the law that impose criminal liability on facilitators of galamsey and questioned why enforcement efforts had not been extended to all alleged offenders.

Bosu said GoldBod could help address challenges in Ghana’s gold value chain by improving the monitoring of legal and illegal gold trading.

However, he argued that the system should have been preceded by strong due diligence and traceability measures to establish the origins of gold purchased through the arrangement.

“What we rather expected is that government should have preceded the purchases with a very strong due diligence and traceability system. Unfortunately, that’s not what has happened,” he stated.

He said the failure to establish such safeguards risked undermining GoldBod’s potential to address problems in the gold value chain.