She said more resources needs to be made available to confront the menace as has been put forward by experts as well as the President. John Dramani Mahama.

Madam Abena Osei-Asare thus proposed a galamsey emergency program with real financing, adding that this will support President Mahama’s statement that Ghana needs a substantially bigger budget than what is currently available if the country is to win the fight against illegal mining

In her contribution to the debate on the 2026 Budget Statement and Fiscal Policy of the government, she asserts that if the Minister’s assertion that the devastation caused by illegal miming has gone far beyond economics and threatens our survival is anything to go by, then the amount allocated for the fight against illegal mining is woefully inadequate.

“If something threatens your survival, what are you supposed to do? You are supposed to fight it to make sure you survival.”

She thus wondered how the government was going to achieve significant results in that regard when out of 2.1 billion budgetary allocations for the Lands and Natural Resources Ministry, only GHS150 million is allocated for the agency responsible for the fight.

The Atiwa MP said per the budgetary allocation, the government appears to be paying lips service to the fight because the amount does not reflect the needed commitment as expressed in words.

Additionally, the former Deputy Finance Minister in the erstwhile President Akufo-Addo administration indicated that the galamsey fight also has the element of livelihoods as people solely depend on it for survival. As such, it was imperative for government to make budgetary provision for alternative livelihoods to take people out of galamsey and find alternative jobs for them. However, the government’s allocation to the alternative livelihoods is only GHS35 million which is only one percent of the GHS2.1 billion allocation for the Ministry.

According to her, the story of environmental degradation, water pollution, high turbidity level of water bodies, and increase cases of non-communicable diseases being recorded at the various hospitals should prick the conscience of the nation to know that the galamsey fight is a battle that must be confronted with all the seriousness it deserves.

“I expect that before we approve this budget and pass appropriation, the Minister would have amended the monies given to fight galamsey and also improve on the alternative livelihoods of people who are weaned off galamsey; that is when you can tell me that this is really threatening our survival and so you’re doing something about it”, she afformed.