Poverty is the reason a lot of people go into illegal small-scale mining (Galamsey), His Eminence Cardinal Peter Appiah Turkson, Chancellor, Pontifical Academies of Sciences and Social Sciences, Vatican, Rome, has said.
He has therefore charged the government of Ghana to create alternative jobs for persons engaged in illegal small-scale mining else the nation risks becoming a failed state. "If the status quo remains, Ghana risks becoming a failed state," he told TV3's Kemini Amanor on the Hot Issues on TV3 on Sunday, October 13.
He added "We need to develop alternative industries to support the youth.
Poverty is a reason a lot of these people go into illegal mining." Earlier this week, the soldiers who have been deployed under the government's "Operation Halt" initiative to fight against illegal small-scale mining destroyed 18 chanfans, 10 industrial water pumping machines, and one excavator in various illegal mining sites across Ghana.