A member and communicator of the Movement for Change, Solomon Owusu, has chided the Mahama administration for keeping the Minerals Commission’s chief executive officer, Martin Kwaku Ayisi, in his position to this day since its inauguration on January 7, 2025.
An appointee of the erstwhile Akufo-Addo government, Ayisi took over from Addae Antwi-Boasiako as the CEO of the commission in March, 2021.
His tenure has seen a serious scale of mess wreaked on the environment through nationwide activities of illegal small-scale miners from that time to date.
In 2022, some small-scale miners in Talensi, a gold-rich district in the Upper East region, accused him and a former minister in charge of the region, Stephen Yakubu, of demanding furniture from them on behalf of the Akufo-Addo administration.
The small-scale miners told the media that the demand was made after Shaanxi Mining Company Limited, a Chinese firm now called Earl International Group (Ghana) Gold Limited, acquired a controversial large-scale mining licence from the commission and, with the aid of some local actors, took over several already-licensed concessions owned by some indigenous small-scale miners in the district.
The former regional minister (Stephen Yakubu) confirmed to Media Without Borders in 2022 that the small-scale miners were asked to buy furniture for the government but said the Minerals Commission unilaterally demanded the furniture from the miners. Ayisi denied the claims when contacted in 2022 by the author of this story, but Robert Boazor Tampoare, a familiar Talensi miner said to be aligned with Ayisi, subsequently told journalists at a news conference that Ayisi actually asked for the furniture from the small-scale miners.
“I’m very surprised the Minerals Commission’s [CEO] is still at post. What’s the name? Ayisi or so. What is he doing there? And this government, too, as if you are not in power! That man has no business spending more than five minutes at the office because if you know our licensing regime, before the Minister of Lands and Natural Resources would sign, it has to come from the Minerals Commission.
“And at the Minerals Commission, they are supposed to submit what you call a business plan. In the business plan, you’d tell the country how you are going to mine, your responsible mining act [and] how, after mining, you’d [reclaim] the land. How come we have our environment destroyed, these people claim they have legitimate licences from the Ministry of Lands and Natural Resources, which were occasioned by the Minerals Commission, and you have such a person still at post?” Owusu said on Pan Africa Television daybreak show, Good Morning Africa, on Monday.
Owusu further noted that the National Democratic Congress (NDC) won the 2024 general elections partly because the New Patriotic Party (NPP) administration failed to effectively deal with illegal mining and its threats particularly on the country’s water bodies and warned that the party could lose power at the next general elections if it went in the same direction as the NPP in the handling of illegal mining issues in the country.
“Mind you, galamsey (illegal mining) was one of the reasons the NDC won heavily,” he said. “And it could be the reason the Movement for Change would take over in 2028.”
Source: Edward Adeti/Media Without Borders/mwbonline.org/Ghana.
