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MONTECRISTO
That the fight against galamsey is ongoing and enhanced is a fact. In terms of investment in the galamsey economy, too, we are being told that it attracts about the highest in terms of import value.
Again, we cannot deny the fact that some fights were prosecuted under the previous administration. Unfortunately, that fight, it is turning out, is a drop in the ocean in terms of deterrence.
While the Minister has indicated that seven out of the nine forests reserved had seen decisive and swift action in arrests, prosecution and conviction, the affected sites have not been disclosed. But that is not to attack the Minister who has shown commitment and has committed to working with all stakeholders to force out criminality within the space and redeem as well as enhance our natural resources volumes.
As civil society, including the political parties and community heads, would admit, the fight will be protracted, probably extending into a decade. That is, if the politician will be committed and civil society unwavering in advocacy, including piling adequate pressure on governments.
In the last few days, we had reports about a section of civil society actors calling for the setup of 24-hour courts to facilitate and accelerate prosecution of the teeming numbers.
The laws
As any decent Ghanaian would equally admit, the hurdle facing lawful fights is the legal frameworks some of which we still want to reform to give teeth to the force of the fight.
Notwithstanding that, natural law demands that persons attacking natural reserves of a nation and subjecting communities and wider economies to jeopardy. Not any nation in the world, under any law, would countenance that. Not in Siberia and Greenland; not in Saudi or Palestine and certainly, not in Cambodia or Afghanistan.
So, as night follows day, the courts will be full – from across the seven out of nine forest reserves – to Accra, based on the magnitude of the cases. In a nation where serious trials, including galamsey, run for several years, we may be stuck in the queue in terms of seeking abiding deterrence. So, while the police and other agencies of national security chase out the perpetrators, the proposal is for special 24-hour courts to be set up in sending the right signals that galamsey would be fought, regardless of who and who are involved and where the incident took place.
Challenges
Fast-tracking justice delivery is relevant, reasonable, optimal and cost-saving. That is why any society will be all for fast-track courts as long as police work effectively, in saving costs, but also in minimising personnel resources that adds to the courts. And such costs can be gargantuan, including add to infrastructure numbers, admin systems that underpin healthy processes and allied services that further puts pressure on the national kitty.
Professionalism is also an issue today regarding prosecution being tardy and, probably, lethargic in building dossier. In such an environment, running 24-hour court processes and proceedings may face further challenges, unless the manpower base of the courts are massively invested in to deliver. But that is how we build and develop societies.
The challenges come; we find answers to resolve them. And then, we move to build systems that further strengthen institutions like the Police and Courts.
Kangaroo courts
Since Roman times and before Christ, trials were and are not allowed during the nights, nor were arrests. You don’t storm homes at wee hours of the night or day and effect an arrest. You didn’t prosecute a suspect, without giving him a fair hearing and you also, among other things, involve witnesses and evidence in nailing an alleged criminal. Every leg of law enforcement was required to be transparent.
A 24-hour court may be too much in the light of the demands that the justice delivery machinery of civilised societies places on the gatekeepers of law and order.
But that, in the estimation of most decent Ghanaians, some sense of urgency needs to be invested into applying the principles of policing and enforcing law and order.
Scourge on national wealth
The canker of galamsey is a scourge that must be tackled. But it is also a scourge that needs decisive action. This is in the light of the element of national security and stability surrounding rape of national assets and natural heritages.
Cocoa is strategic sector from chain to chain. So is timber and so, too, is gold. Each of these sectors is worth billions of dollars in assets chain by chain.
Again, that is the same story as regards timber, an asset which is abused through illegal logging, like gold as we see in the galamsey sector. From furniture to upholstery and construction to tissue and paper production, timber is massive raw material.
At least, since independence, gold, timber, and cocoa have been traditional exports that enter markets across civilisations, including the Americas, Middle East, Eirope and Asia.
Its impacts on world economies is equally in the billions – even trillions – of dollars across the chains. Aside that is the threat to food and water production, with Greater Accra now facing the severity of the acts of impunity perpetrated by local and migrant populations.
Now it is not only Ankobra, Pra, Oti and the Volta up North terribly affected by galamsey; it is also the Densu and Ayensu which are supplying about a quarter of the population in the region.
Community stability
For those who care to know, security in galamsey communities is compromised because of the presence of illegal arms and subtle or forced capture of arable lands, including cocoa plantations, cassava and plantain as well as cocoyam farms.
Health is equally compromised as young people develop cardiac, renal and respiratory diseases that defeat any reasons for polluting waterbodies. A sick community is potentially a dying one, without hope for the next generation.
For those producing food commodities to support food security mandates, the waning health and energy is lost to disease and imminent death, with the consequences pushed downstream to other communities in an unending cycle of hopelessness that the politician cannot afford to ignore today or tomorrow.
Future
Ghana is hugely indebted. From tenure to tenure through Heads of State to political parties, the debt situation has never minimised. Yet, we can afford to look the other way, while local goons and misled cocoons, together with migrant populations rape our collective heritage.
When an idea is mooted therefore about 24-hour courts being set up to add space and resources to the current discouraging levels of investigation, prosecution, conviction and sentencing, I believe the message is about showing 24-hour commitment in deterring delinquents.
It also means 24-hour vigilance in sending relevant signals that the days of impunity in wanton destruction of natural resources are over. That is why the responsibility is no longer that of the politician.
Collectively, with the youth, chiefs and religious leaders as well as academia and the media, the onus lies on us all to cooperate with the security agencies and the courts to rescue our resources and chase out all goons and cocoons, in abiding strategies and decisive programmes. That is critical in deterring the criminals who have, in the last couple of decades, decided to put us to sleep by the force of physical, mental and political weapons.
