The government is making Mercury-free mining equipment accessible to small-scale miners as part of efforts to sterilize the small-scale mining industry and safeguard the environment, especially water bodies and forest reserves.
According to the Minerals Commission, the technology, which can recover 90% of gold, would promote ecologically sustainable mining.
Mireku Duker, the Deputy Minister-designate for Lands and Natural Resources, who handed over the equipment, said it was the start of mercury-free mining in Ghana.
Mr. Duker said, “I feel that adopting, embracing, and operationalizing it in Ghana would go a long way toward propelling and projecting the small scale mining industry.”
“We want to make sure that we continue to push for a peaceful atmosphere in which local people may mine and put money in their pockets.”
Martin Ayisi, the interim Chief Executive Officer of the Minerals Commission, says the government is working on ways to make it simpler for small-scale miners to buy equipment.
“We’re going to meet down with them and work out a deal where we offer them flexible payment terms so they can pay as they work,” he said.
Artisanal and small-scale gold mining, which employs mercury, is thought to pollute the environment more than any other human activity. As a stable amalgam, mercury metal is utilized to extract gold from ore.
After that, the amalgam is heated to remove the mercury and separate the gold.
While mercury amalgamation has been used to mine gold and silver for thousands of years, it is still a common method in today’s artisanal gold mining.
Over the past decade, scientific data on mercury’s and its constituents’ environmental effects has exploded.
Artisanal and small-scale gold mining is expected to release between 410 and 1,400 tonnes of mercury per year, accounting for 37 percent of world mercury emissions.
One of Ghana’s first actions was to join the Minamata Convention on Mercury in 2017, which went into effect on August 16th of the same year.
Despite all of this information, mercury is being used at Ghana’s mining locations. However, Ghana’s government is taking significant measures to address the crisis.
For the time being, it has seven Mercury-free mining equipment from Commodity Monitor.
Without the use of chemicals, the device effectively recovers more gold.
Source: CITINEWSROOM
