A political scientist at the University of Ghana, Dr Joshua Zaato, has questioned what happens to gold extracted through illegal mining, commonly known as galamsey, insisting that a critical gap remains in the national conversation about the fight against the menace.<\/p>\n
Speaking on JoyNews\u2019 AM Show on Wednesday, February 26, Dr Zaato expressed concern about the environmental and human cost of illegal mining and challenged authorities to account for the destination of galamsey gold within the system.<\/p>\n
\u201cOur waters have been poisoned, our trees have been poisoned, our rivers have been poisoned, human beings have been poisoned. Birth defects, cancers, and the rest that happen\u2014they are all happening here,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
Dr Zaato argued that while there have been public assurances about efforts to curb illegal mining and gold smuggling, there has been no clear and rigorous policy direction on how to separate illegally mined gold from legally sourced gold.<\/p>\n
\u201cI did not see a rigorous policy announcement yesterday to separate Galamsey gold from real gold. I didn\u2019t see that. So far, there has been a very important question that we refuse to answer,\u201d he stated.<\/p>\n
He continued, “There is Galamsey gold in the system right now. My question is, what happens to the Galamsey gold? My question is, where does the Galamsey gold go?\u201d<\/p>\n
The political scientist noted that while it is widely asserted that the state\u2019s gold trading authorities do not purchase illegally mined gold, the persistence and apparent expansion of galamsey operations suggest that the proceeds must be finding their way somewhere.<\/p>\n
\u201cNow, we are saying that GoldBod has successfully prevented smuggling of Galamsey\u2026 But Galamsey is going on, and there\u2019s Galamsey Gold. What happens to it? Where does it go?\u201d he queried.<\/p>\n
Dr Zaato further reasoned that if such gold is being confiscated by the state, it should logically weaken the financial capacity of illegal miners to continue operating.<\/p>\n
\u201cIf they are confiscated by the state, then it means that the Galamseyers now do not have money to invest. But we are told that they are still expanding their business,\u201d he observed.<\/p>\n
He cautioned against prioritising economic targets at the expense of environmental sustainability and public health, warning of long-term consequences if illegal mining is tacitly tolerated.<\/p>\n
\u201cMy sincere hope and prayer is that we don\u2019t try to achieve these figures on the back of our health, on the back of the destruction of our business, on the back of our forest. We don\u2019t try to do this by ignoring or closing one eye while allowing Galamsey to come and pass,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhen we do that, there will be no human beings left to benefit from the economy,\u201d he concluded.<\/p>\n
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DISCLAIMER: The Views, Comments, Opinions, Contributions and Statements made by Readers and Contributors on this platform do not necessarily represent the views or policy of Multimedia Group Limited.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A political scientist at the University of Ghana, Dr Joshua Zaato, has questioned what happens to gold extracted…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":303108,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[138,219,111,139,69],"class_list":{"0":"post-303107","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-economy","8":"tag-business","9":"tag-economy","10":"tag-new-zealand","11":"tag-newzealand","12":"tag-nz"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/303107","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=303107"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/303107\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/303108"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=303107"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=303107"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=303107"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}