Gold: Government to soon commence mineral prospecting in Volta, Oti regions
The Minister for Lands and Natural Resources, Samuel Abu Jinapor, has revealed that government will soon begin prospecting for gold in the Volta and Oti Regions.
This is to ascertain the availability of the natural commodity and the possibility of mining in commercial quantities.Ghana is currently the largest producer of gold in Africa with South Africa being the second-largest producer on the continent.
He added that currently, 13 out of the 16 regions in the country have been established to have gold deposits in commercial quantities.
“I have determined for us to enhance the exploration, prospecting, recognizance of minerals here in the Volta Region. And I said so because in Ghana today, 13 regions out of the 16 regions have been established to have, mineral deposits in commercial quantities either gold, bauxite, iron, diamond or lithium or the rest. In the case of gold, all the regions in Ghana seem to have it.”
“The two or so regions where we’ve not as yet established gold reserves is the Volta and the Oti Regions. But I’m taking the view, that we need to invest more in prospecting and prospecting simply means, investigating whether or not there are gold reserves in the Volta. There should be because historically as many of you will attest to, the conventional wisdom was that gold was found only in the Southern part of our country; Central, Western, Western North, Ashanti, Eastern,” he stated.
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The paramount chief of Avatime traditional area, Togbe Osei Adzatekpor embraced the initiative and emphasised that the region must significantly benefit from its natural resources.He also appealed to the government to deal with environmental threatening issues in the region such as bush fires and indiscriminate felling of trees.
“We believe that the prospecting of minerals as you said, should benefit the people. Here in the Volta region our greatest or my greatest disaster on which is that bush fires, bush fires particularly will be minimized. My wish is that illegal chain saw operations will be minimised.”
“In my traditional area, we have instituted some measures to ensure that if you want to go into the forest to fell a tree, you must see a committee that has been set up in the traditional area before you go and fell that tree. But invariably, people do not adhere to that rule, that simple rule of informing the committee,’’ he added.
