Accra, Sept. 15, GNA - Mr Ahmed Nantogmah, Director of Public Affairs and Environment for the Ghana Chamber of Mines, on Tuesday called for a law to mandate mining companies to invest compensatory funds for people whose lands are affected by the extractive business. He said mining companies were concerned about the sustainability of the environment and improvement of the lifestyles of indigenes of mining communities because this would curtail hostilities that sometimes arose between the two bodies because of corporate social responsibility issues.

Mr Nantogmah said this in Accra at the monthly meeting of Net Impact, an organization working to promote good Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) between companies and their catchment areas. The meeting was on the topic "CSR, What Companies Should Do to Ensure Sustainability of their Businesses and that of the Environment". The Net Impact has been using the session to purge companies' Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA) plans and CSR on how they could transform the society.

Mr Nantogmah said many of the indigenes had little or no knowledge on investment making them to "waste" compensatory funds paid them only to turn around to demand more. He said when there was a law mandating mining companies to invest such funds for the beneficiaries, it would help the companies which had the financial expertise, to put such funds into high yielding ventures, to generate returns which could cater for even the next generation of the beneficiaries. Mr Nantogmah said currently, the law only mandates mining companies to directly pay compensation to people whose lands had been affected by mining activities.

He said compensation and CSR programmes took large chunks of funds, adding that, it was not encouraging when those funds were paid only for the beneficiaries to use them and come back to demand more. Mr Nantogmah said activities of "galamsey" operators also remained a threat to the industry and called on government to license such operators and allocate them concessions. Mr Robert Klah, Executive Director of Net Impact, said the organization was engaging companies to assess their EIA plans to see how best they could lead to sustainability of businesses and the environment. 16 Sept. 09