Galamsey: Name and shame financiers – Ken Ashigbey

Convener for the Media Coalition Against Galamsey, Ken Ashigbey, has urged security agencies and journalists in the country to name and shame the financiers of illegal small scale mining (galamsey) as a way of curbing the menace.

According to him, it is evident that the persons arrested at illegal mining sites are not the financiers of the scourge; hence, their arrest does little to discourage people from joining the galamsey trade.

It is believed that people such as politicians, top business moguls and traditional rulers inject huge sums of money into getting equipment and other logistics for the illegal miners due to the capital-intensive nature of the illicit act.

It is on the back of this that Mr Ashigbey in an interview with Class News, appealed to the security agencies and journalists to expose the galamsey financiers as a way of rooting out the canker.

He said: “Most of the people we are arresting are not the people behind it, they are not the life blood to this thing…but what we need to do as journalists is that, if our intelligence agencies won’t do it, [we have] to be able to follow the trail of the money. We need to go to the areas where these monies are, [that is] the rural banks and the savings and loans. Let’s follow their savings portfolio and see who the people who are actually financing these operations are.

“We need to be able to expose these big people. Some of them might be politicians, some of them might be chiefs and some of them might be wealthy people in these areas. So as journalists, to be able to do that, you need to make sure that you have evidence that can stand the test of time in court and then we need to name and shame these people and push for these people to be prosecuted.”