Supreme Court Judge nominee, Justice Philip Bright Mensah has suggested that Judges assigned to ‘galamsey’ zones be given training in the Chinese language as part of efforts to address ongoing difficulties in prosecuting Chinese nationals engaging in galamsey.
During his vetting before Parliament’s Appointments Committee on Tuesday, June 17, 2025, Justice Mensah stated that language barriers continue to be an obstacle to effective prosecutions of illegal miners, especially when Chinese nationals are involved.
“When they are arrested, especially these Chinese people and sent to the court, the difficulty is that they don’t speak English. Even if they understand English, they refuse to speak English.
“And because the police and enforcement agencies also are unable to speak their language, it becomes more difficult to get them prosecuted,” he noted.
He said the lack of effective interpretation of the Chinese language in court proceedings often hampers justice delivery and allows offenders to walk free.
“The interpreters themselves, sometimes they are also a problem,” he added.
“So if the Judge himself understands the language, it will be better served for him to understand what he is doing for us to be able to curb the menace of galamsey.”
Justice Mensah proposed that either the Judicial Training Institute (JTI) be resourced to provide Chinese language instruction locally or Judges be sent to China for language studies.
“I would suggest strongly or I recommend that the judges who are in this, the areas where this galamsey is going on, the judges must either be taken to China for further studies in the Chinese language or they should fashion; the JTI [Judicial Training Institute] must be resourced to bring experts to come and train our judges.”
