Abu Jinapor promises to deal strictly with illegal mining

Samuel Abu Jinapor, Minister-designate of Lands and Natural Resources has given a firm assurance to deal with the issues of illegal mining in the country without “fear or favour”.

He said if given the nod by the House, he would apply the law strictly without fear or favour in order to succeed.

“I want to give a firm assurance… if I get the approval from the House, I am moving in there to apply the law without fear or favour. If I don’t do that I will set myself for failure”.

Abu Jinapor gave the promise when he appeared before the Appointments Committee of Parliament.

The nominee who was former Deputy Chief of Staff and now Member of Parliament (MP) for Damongo is among some of the young persons to be appointed by President Akufo-Addo to serve in his government.

Abu Jinapor also explained that the issues of illegal mining were intricate and complicated and that previous governments had problems dealing with it.

He maintained that President Akufo-Addo was committed to making an impact in the fight against the illegal mining activities in the country and the President in his first term in office was able to rollout his policy on this activity, with success and failures.

“My instructions from the president are very clear, that I should go there and keep my head focused and work hard to ensure that we reduce the incidents of illegal mining in our country.”

No excavator missing

Jinapor also pointed out that no excavators had gone missing, contrary to reports in the media that 500 excavators had gone missing.

“I have had a briefing from the inter-ministerial committee on illegal mining and I want to put on record that no excavators were missing. It was a media man who put it out there and that started the controversy,” he stressed.

Jinapor said the task force confiscated 209 excavators and could account for all of them.

“As we speak, 161 of those excavators have been released. Some were given to the National Disaster Management Organisation (NADMO), the Kumasi Metropolitan Assembly and the Accra Metropolitan Assembly, while the court ordered that we return some to their owners,” he said.

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