When about 40 miners became trapped at eastern Ghana’s Nyanfoman-Noyem mine earlier this month, the bizarre truth is that it was seen as a normal occurrence that warranted no panic.
The belief is that deaths of illegal miners are sacrifices to the gods for more gold. Illegal miners will brush aside such accidents and continue their work.
So when rescue teams arrived in Nyanfoman-Noyem on August 14, they received a frosty reception. They were afraid retrieval of any corpse would attract the police and disrupt their business.
”The people did not cooperate. Luckily, we met one of the survivors who has been helpful,” said John Badoo, head of the rescue mission from AngloGold Ashanti, a Ghanaian-South African mining company.
During the six days the rescue team was in the town, residents went about their business as normal. The illegal miners continued their work, seemingly oblivious to the deaths.
When the excavators of the rescue mission went to work, illegal miners were too glad to collect the sand and look for gold.
There were no tears shed for any colleagues trapped below the earth. In the end, no illegal miners were rescued and no corpses was retrieved when the rescue mission was suspended after six days.
In an effort to control the operations of illegal miners and also collect revenue from them, the government said in 1989 they would have to apply for a permit to mine.
The Precious Minerals Company was also created for them to sell to the government. Under the law, prospectors are allowed to mine an area as long as they are registered and their operations do not conflict with the general activity of the area.
The law stipulates that they must only engage in surface mining as they do not have the equipment and know-how to undertake underground mining.
Ebenezer Sackey, chief mines inspector, said the law imposes limitations on their operations as well, but most illegal prospectors ignore them.
”When small-scale gold mining was regularised, they were limited to a depth to which they can work. In the inception of regularising it, it was thought that if the small-scale gold miners were allowed to work on hard rocks, which involves using explosives, this could pose a problem,” he said.
”Most of them have not been trained in the use of explosives so to avoid all these problems, they were restricted to these very shallow depths. They were not to work deeper than 10 feet, [three metres]” he said.
Large areas have been degraded by the illegal miners, who do not reclaim the land as they move on to other areas. In some towns rich in diamonds or gold, there is seemingly no areas that are off limits to the miners, who burrow under schools, cemeteries and houses.
At the gold mining town of Prestea in the Western Region, dust levels are dangerously above the recommended figures.
The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) was quoted as saying although safety levels are fixed at 0,07 grams per cubic metre, the level is 0,17 grams per cubic metre in the town.
The effect of that rise in dust levels is asthma and TB. But according to Ransford Sekyi of the EPA, illegal operators are unwilling to accept the agency’s advice.
”When we held a public forum recently, we were nearly chased out. It was the military that saved us,” he said.
The creation of a new class of wealthy people from illegal mining is breeding anarchy in those areas.
Prostitutes flock to there with the attendant risks of sexually transmitted diseases and HIV/Aids. The use of drugs in these areas is rampant and there is general lawlessness. – Sapa-DPA