Small-scale mining policies in Ghana: Miners’ knowledge, attitudes and practices

Abstract

Activities and operations of Artisanal Small-Scale Mining (ASM) have recently appealed to the attention of policymakers, researchers, and the public in Ghana. This stems from the negative impacts of ASM operations on the environment and livelihoods of local inhabitants as well as the disregard for available ASM mining policies. This study, therefore, investigates whether artisanal small-scale miners have enough knowledge of the mining policies and their implementations or not. The study adopted the Knowledge, Attitudes and Practices (KAP) framework approach to design the research, collect, and analyze primary data. Likert-type scale and standardized weighted index were used to assess the level of knowledge on mining policies and the extent of good attitudes and practices adopted by miners. The most aware ASM policy provision is the one that mandates the government to reserve demarcated ASM areas for Ghanaians whilst the least aware provision is the one that admonishes the government to promote cooperative saving among ASM. The awareness index is lower than the attitude index towards the policy provisions. In terms of practices, miners continued to use bad practices with associated negative impacts on the environment and rural livelihoods. It is therefore important for the government through Mineral Commission, District, Municipal and Metropolitan Assemblies to intensify the education on the ASM policies. These could be done with the help of ASM associations. The current systems where a cluster of districts has a single Mineral Commission office should be restructured to make sure that each mining district has an office.