Poverty and mine’s compensation package: Experiences of local farmers in Prestea mining community

Abstract

The design and application of compensation package by the major large-scale mining company in Ghana's Prestea has not done enough to alleviate poverty of local farmers. This claim is made in the light of occasional food shortage and poor living conditions of local farmers. The mining company is to compensate and alleviate the poverty of local farmers for impacting on their farmlands has put a package together. Although expansive activities of the company have resulted in gold boom, unemployment and poverty have intensified in view of loss of farmlands to the large-scale mining company. Moreover, there are minimal prospects for local people to secure wage employment in the company's resuscitated gold-mining industry. It is therefore crucial to assess the capacity of the compensation package as part of the company's corporate social-responsibility (CSR) program to alleviate poverty of local farmers. This paper interrogates the strength of the package by rating its efficacy and impact on poverty alleviation. This paper demonstrates that the compensation is inadequate in alleviating poverty because the package is not commensurate with the value of the profitable farming industry.