Daryl Bosu, Deputy Director of A Rocha Ghana, has said Ghana’s fight against illegal mining, also known as ‘galamsey’, might have yielded better results if the Mahama government had taken swift action upon assuming office.
While acknowledging that the government inherited a monumental challenge in tackling galamsey from the previous administration, Bosu is of the view that the current leadership should have sprang into action immediately after taking over.
According to Bosu, the Akufo-Addo government’s abandonment of the galamsey fight two years before the end of its tenure presented a significant challenge for the current administration, which was well aware of the issue prior to taking over from the NPP.
Commenting on Mahama’s six months in office, specifically focusing on galamsey fight on TV3’s Ghana Tonight on Monday, July 7, 2025, Mr. Bosu said, “We all acknowledge that this government inherited a very dire situation if you look at the galamsey issue.”
“Two years to the end of the previous government’s term and galamsey fight practically came to a halt. So this government inherited a humongous challenge of having to deal with unprecedented siege in our [forest] reserves, with illegal mining also going on heavily in the off reserve areas,” he stated.
Mr. Bosu said Ghanaians would have expected to see more decisive action from this new administration, which was expected to take more drastic measures than the previous government that failed to effectively address the issue.
“I think that we would have expected that for a new government, we would have wanted to see more decisive action, coming into power, and also knowing the issues even before they took the realms of government, they should have rather maybe hit the ground running, not dragging its feet.
“Maybe, if government had taken a different posture towards that, we would have really been way ahead in the fight against galamsey,” he remarked.
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