We’ll prioritise other environmental challenges — Environment minister

The Ministry of Environment, Science and Technology (MEST), has said the initiative to improve the environmental situation will not only be focused on fighting illegal mining but will place equal priority on other environmental issues such as air pollution, electronic waste, rubbish and Sanitation. 

This is because the menace of plastic and e-waste was as threatening and devastating as illegal mining, popularly known as galamsey.

The sector minister, Murtala Mohammed said in tackling the other environmental challenges, it was necessary to demonopolise waste management in the country to ensure efficiency in service delivery.

"That is not to target existing waste management companies.

We need to demonopolise this to the extent that we engage local authorities at the local governance level, we engage small and medium enterprises (SMEs) to be able to do that," he said. 

Galamsey fight

In an interaction with the media, Mr Muhammed stated that the government remained resolute in its efforts to curb galamsey, saying it would be tackled without political colouring and that the axe would fall heavily on any person found to be involved or facilitating the illegality.  

“It does not matter who is engaged in galamsey activities; whether you belong to the National Democratic Congress (NDC) or the New Patriotic Party (NPP), you will be dealt with as long as the President has given us his absolute authority that we should deal with those who are violating our laws as far as sustaining our environment is concerned,” he stressed.

He further indicated the initiative to have a coordinated and well-rehearsed strategy to stem tides in terms of protecting the environment will be a collaboration among the relevant stakeholder ministries and agencies in the environment, natural resources and security sectors, stating that one of the reasons the previous efforts to tackle the galamsey menace did not yield the needed results was the sidelining of the environment ministry.

“Galamsey is a problem because of the danger it poses to our environment and then you have the whole Environment Ministry and its agencies which were not even participating in interventions to curb it and that is what we will do differently,” he said.

"Of course, MEST will play a lead role in confronting galamsey but we cannot do it in isolation.

The ministers of Lands and Natural Resources, Defence, the Interior, Local Government, Rural Development and Chieftaincy will also play key roles in the fight," he said. 

Tree for life

On planned initiatives to restore the country’s degraded landscape, the minister said the government remained committed to implementing the Tree for Life manifesto promise by the NDC and also take steps to restore the quality of polluted rivers.

He said while a programme would be rolled out to reclaim lands degraded by galamsey, all citizens, including schoolchildren, would be rallied to plant more trees and nurture them to maturity.

“We are exploring other innovative ways of looking for the needed resources so that we do not need to inject money from the state to execute that,” Mr Murtala said.