The National Concerned Small Scale Miners Association, Ghana has called on Ghanaians who have been adversely affected by the prevailing economic hardship not to vote for the New Patriotic Party (NPP) in the December 7 elections.
According to the Association, the ban on small scale mining by the current administration has affected their members seriously.
“We wish to call on all well-meaning Ghanaians and small-scale miners whose livelihoods have been shattered by the NPP in the last seven years due to the insensitive ban on small scale mining to reject the party at the polls, come December, 2024,” the Association urged in a press release signed by its President, Michael Kwadwo Peprah.
“We wish by this press release to remind and also ask Dr. Bawumia to tell us how he intends to rescue the small-scale mining sector after helping Nana Akufo-Addo to collapse same,” the small-scale miners demanded.
They alleged that, “There is incontrovertible evidence that the current state of things in the small-scale mining sector only benefits the NPP and its apparatchiks, local banks which were the primary source of financing for small scale mining operations like UniBank, UT Bank and GN Bank were collapsed under the shady banking sector clean up, the promise by Dr. Bawumia to decentralize the Minerals Commission and the EPA, and to set up district mining committees is nothing but an empty promise; in any case, his boss vowed to put his presidency on the line to fight galamsey, but the opposite is what pertains today.”
The Association further alleged that, “Programmes like Galamstop and the introduction of drone technology, mapping of concessions and tracking of excavators that were haphazardly instituted by this government was nothing but a waste of taxpayers’ money, and the fact that the military continues to hold over 200 excavators belonging to small scale miners and other investors in the small-scale mining sector, only goes to cement the fact that, the NPP and their flag bearer, Dr. Mahamudu Bawumia lacks the acumen to steer the salvage the small scale mining sector.”