Ghana’s Deputy Minister of Lands and Natural Resources said the Government is ‘fed up with mining deaths’ following an accident in January 2019 that claimed the lived of 16 illegal miners.
The government of Ghana has moved quickly to close illegal mining pits belonging to some small-scale miners at Gbane in the Talensi in the wake of the incident despite some mine owners seeking an injunction in the local court.
But it’s a highly complicated scenario for Ghana’s government with many mine owners claiming that dead mineworkers were not authorised to work in their mine following an incident.
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The mine where workers died in January is one of many where companies claim that the dead were illegal miners who gained entry to their mines through alternate shafts.
Shaanxi Mining Ghana limited had been pursued by the Ghanaian Minerals Commission following its initial response of ‘distancing itself from the disaster.’ But the commission investigating the blasting incident where the mine workers died found that several of the miners were actually Shaanxi employees. Shaanxi was ultimately slapped with fines and held responsible for the accident.
The string of disasters also appears laden with alleged corrupt practices and has claimed the scalp of a high profile minister after he allegedly sought to bribe a journalist ‘not to run a story’ on the Chinese mining company involved.
Deputy Minister of Lands and Natural Resources Benito Owusu Bio has reportedly paid a visit to the mining area in the company of the Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of the Minerals Commission to commence the sealing exercise.
The Minister said the decision to seal the illegal mining pits is one of the several actions taken by the ministry to stop the frequent mining deaths resulting from mining accidents in the area.
“The people of Ghana and the entire nation are tired of these happenings here. We have been here before but when we left it still went on, so this time we are here to seal the pits once and for all” he said.
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