Nana Obiri Boahen, a former Deputy General Secretary of the NPP, has called for the regularisation of small-scale mining as a measure to control the illegal mining menace in the country.

He expressed his difficulty in appreciating why the Ministry of Lands and Natural Resources makes acquisition of legal documents for small-scale mining cumbersome.

Speaking to the politicisation of the illegal mining menace, during a discussion on Okay FM on March 18, 2025, he attributed the messy state of the vegetation and water bodies in the country to the poor regulation of small-scale mining.

In his estimation, if the acquisition of a license for mining is properly regulated and rightly acquired, it would enhance tracking of all actors of the mineral exploration sector.

“Government should be proactive in the area of license acquisition. It should be highly decentralisd. The district assemblies should be clothed with the powers to issue license to interested person within their districts.

“The acquisition of these documents will inadvertently aid them to generate a proper database of the actors in the mining space within their locality. It will also chart a path for the miners to access technical advice from the right sources,” he said.

He added that decentralization, coupled with a collaboration with local authorities, can help monitor and properly sensitise them on the best practices in the extraction industry, to curb the damages caused by illegal mining.

“So, for me, let's regularise the small-scale mining, but enforce reclamation and other best practices while engaging chiefs to enforce the laws in areas within their jurisdiction,” he said.

VPO/AE