The Member of Parliament for Effiduase Asokore, Dr. Ayew Afriyie, has revealed that the New Patriotic Party (NPP) government will not ban illegal mining, commonly known as ‘galamsey’, either today or tomorrrow.
Speaking Bawumia’s Volunteers 2024 (B24) launch in Kumasi, the Chairman of Parliament’s Health Committee stated that the Nana Addo – Bawumia led are not ready to put their political success at risk.
Dr. Afriyie explained that banning illegal mining could lead to a disaster for the NPP particularly in mining constituencies whose livelihoods is from ‘galamsey’.
According to him the opposition National Democratic Congress (NDC) intentionally imported foreigners to engage in illegal mining, hence earning them the political capital to defeat the NPP in the coming 2024 general elections.
He said “The NDC saw that we [NPP] were winning the seats in the mining areas, so they decided to go and import foreigners to engage in illegal mining on our water bodies. The whole water bodies have not been a problem until now; it just started one month ago. It is someone behind that to force the NPP government to stop galamsey so that we will lose the seats. We won’t stop them [Galamseyers] today or tomorrow.”
He lambasted the NDC for hiring journalist to escalate the situation by consistently talking about it. Dr. Afriyie believes the NDC demonstrating in Kumasi about the ‘galamsey’ menace won’t end well with them.
He remarked “They take their journalists to talk about it. Is galamsey done in Accra? They should come to Kumasi to demonstrate against ‘galamsey’; like they will see”.