The secretary to the Inter-Ministerial Committee on Illegal Mining, Charles Bissiw, has said government is setting up a software application to track illegal small-scale mining activities in the country.
Speaking to Chief Jerry Forson on Ghana Yensom on Accra100.5FM on Wednesday, 12 September 2018, Mr Bissiw debunked the idea that some members of governing New Patriotic Party (NPP) are involved in illegal mining.
According to him, government is developing a software called “Galamstop” to help fight the menace.
Explaining how Galamstop works, Mr Bissiw said it is a tracker that will be given to Metropolitan, Municipal and District Assemblies (MMDCEs), to be fixed on all excavators in the mining areas, and “then we link it to a system”.
“We have what is called the Geo-fencing area; it’s like your geographical area where you work so that when we’re sitting at the Jubilee House Annex, at the regional administration, if they are digging, we’ll see the number of excavators in each district…
“When the excavator is leaving any mining field, we’ll get the alert, the president will have the Galamstop, Regional Ministers, the Chief of Staff, Financial Committee, the Metropolitan, Municipal and District Assemblies (MMDCEs) will all have the Galamstop, so, it will alert them that the excavators are moving, it will alert them on what is happening.”
He stated that after the tracking system, government will know how many mining concessions there are in each district.
“We will know how many excavators we have in each district, I’m not saying it is going to be 100 per cent accurate, but when you put a lot of deterrent, a lot of monitoring mechanisms in place, it will be difficult for the excavators to move to places they are not allowed to go.”
Source: Ghana/AccraFM.com
