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President Akufo Addo in his second encounter with the media has stated that his fight against galamsey is by no means won as the country has a long way to go to put measures in place to curtail the illegal operations before considering lifting the ban.

Even though the President advisors are yet to meet to review the fight against galamsey in the country before considering the lifting of the ban, Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo in his own opinion said that the Small Scale Miners need training and other measures need to be put in place first.

“Next week the group that advises me and works with me is going to meet to review where we are and decide when and if the time is ready for lifting of the ban and so a decision will not ready until after that meeting with Cabinet next week”.

“Let me say a few words of my own; these are my own personal views and I am not committing my advisors”.

“I believe that the fight against Galamsey is by no means won; we still have a long way to go in putting in place the structures in terms of training that is undergoing on with the Small Scale Miners, the Shaven and Excavator owners who continue to operate in the fight against that; all those are measures that we need to advance and intensify before we can say to ourselves that yes, we believe in the success and we have won this fight and that therefore the time has come for us to lift the ban”.

President Akufo Addo added that apart from harm being done to the country through the activities of illegal mining, much of the value that Ghana should derive from gold imports is criminally being disposed off.

“I am saying this because at the same time, some of the outcome of the galamsey menace in the country perhaps are not sufficiently addressed or articulated. Senior Minister went on official visit to Dubai and there he was met with a gleeful story that ‘oh you people are doing very well...last year, we recorded 7bn dollars worth of gold imports from Ghana when the official records are talking about 2bn dollars”.

“These are the facts, so it is telling you that apart from the harm that these activities doing to our country, much of the value that our nation should derive from these activities are also criminally being disposed off”.

“So I am aware that there are very large issues involve; employment for those who are engaged in it. All of these things are very much on radial and part of the policies that we are trying to roll out but I think that we should all be very clear that this is one fight that we cannot go and redraw from it. We need to prosecute it until we can see an appreciable transformation of our countryside, the state of our water bodies and the quality of the forest we have. But all of these is to say that the decision yet still have to be made.”