Spokesperson for the National Anti-Illegal Mining Operations Secretariat (NAIMOS), Paa Kwesi Schandorf, says the government has introduced a stricter system to control the importation and use of excavators in mining communities.
He said the measures, implemented under Lands and Natural Resources Minister Emmanuel Armah-Kofi Buah, were designed to support the fight against illegal mining and represented a significant change from the arrangements in place under the previous NPP administration between 2017 and 2024.
Speaking on JoyNews, Schandorf said there had previously been no effective system to supervise how excavators entered the country or where they were subsequently deployed.
“It is very interesting to note that from 2017 to 2024, we did not have any robust regime that was supervising the importation and deployment of excavators into mining communities,” he said.
“The Minister, Honourable Armah Kofi-Buah has always couched it this way that we had a free for all affair where excavators were just coming into the country without any form of regulatory oversight.”
Under the current process, anyone importing an excavator for small-scale mining must first secure clearance from the Minerals Commission and the Ministry of Lands and Natural Resources.
The applicant must demonstrate that they are a licensed miner and that the equipment is intended for an authorised mining operation.
Once that clearance has been granted, the excavator must be fitted with a GPS tracking device through an internal Minerals Commission process. The equipment is then monitored from a central control room.
“But currently as we speak, if you have imported an excavator right for example, under the guise that you were a miner, you have to as a matter of necessity receive clearance from the Minerals Commission and the Ministry to justify that indeed you are a legal small-scale miner and you are bringing in the excavator for that intended purpose,” Schandorf said.
“After you have been able to exhaust that procedure, the next thing is that you would have to go through the Minerals Commission internal process of a GPS tracker being featured into your excavator.”
“Indeed, there is a control room at the Minerals Commission that monitors every moving excavator,” he added.
Schandorf said the tracking system allows officials to identify the location of each machine and deactivate it if it leaves the area approved for its operations.
“If you said the excavator is going to be working in Swedru, for example, and then within the course of time, it is realised that the excavator has now moved to Winneba, immediately, it will be disabled,” he said.
About 1,300 excavators are currently being monitored through the system, according to Schandorf.
He also said authorities had impounded between 5,000 and 6,000 excavators after their importers failed to give plausible reasons for bringing the equipment into the country.
