Nabdam seeing more block houses due to Akufo-Addo's policies - Gambila

Ghana’s Ambassador to Burkina Faso Boniface Gambila says people in the Nabdam area should always be grateful to Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo’s government.

He says initiatives introduced by the President has made life better and provided great opportunities for the people to enable them build befitting houses with blocks.

Boniface Gambila was making reference to the Community Mining Scheme initiative that has sanitized the mining sector and afforded residents of the district, who were hitherto unemployed, job opportunities in the mining sector.

“People were allowed to do their small-scale mining; they (government) said ‘register 25 acre land as a group, you get a license and you operate.’

"When the policy came, those who were unemployed, grouped themselves and went into it. I can tell you most of the blockhouses that sprang up in my area, a greater percentage of them were these small-scale miners. So it means we have moved from normal thatch houses to well-roofed blockhouses. That is a positive impact,” he stated.

Boniface Gambila placed the Community Mining Scheme under social intervention by the government arguing that it has had a very positive impact on the people and changing lives for the better.

“It is a social intervention policy. They were not working in any big offices and you say that they have moved to do mining. They were serious unemployed youth.

"They had no job doing apart from subsistence farming. But in the absence of that, we could have had an expansion of armed robbers. So you cannot delink what you call social intervention policies from it,” he added.

The Community Mining Scheme was initiated by the Akufo-Addo’s government in its first tenure as part of efforts to tackle illegal mining popularly known as galamsey. The initiative is aimed at creating thousands of jobs for residents of mining communities by embedding them into the mining value chain. This, the government, believes would curb the galamsey menace.