Mining companies must take strategic advantage of the price boom and by extension increased margins from last year and this year to invest in modern infrastructure and expand existing ones, General Secretary of the Ghana Mine Workers’ Union, Abdul-Moomin Gbana, has said.
Speaking at a ceremony to review the activities of the Union’s second half of 2021 in Accra yesterday, he also stressed that mining companies should take advantage of the increase in gold prices to increase production and intensify exploration activities.
“This, we believe is a substantial step towards the creation of decent and sustainable jobs and a strategic approach to sustaining the industry,” he said.
Mr Gbana said unlike other sectors which had been heavily hit since the outbreak of the pandemic, the global gold industry and by extension the mining industry so far stood out as the utmost beneficiary of this global health crisis.
“Gold since the beginning of last year has seen an unprecedented break-through in its price as it soared above two thousand US dollars an ounce (US$2,000/oz) towards the tail end of last year and has maintained relative stability since the beginning of this year. The World Gold Council has posited that Gold has been on a generally positive trend for the past few years,” he said.
He said the Union was excited about the government’s plan in the 2022 budget to increase the presence of wholly owned Ghanaian companies in the large-scale to mid-tier areas of the mining sub-sector.
Mr Gbana further indicated that the Union was impressed about the government’s plan to introduce the Minerals Income Investment Fund Small Scale Mining Incubation Programme with an allocated budget of GH₵354 million to help transform wholly-owned Ghanaian Small Scale Mining companies into mid-tier to large-scale companies over a period of 24 months beginning February, 1 2022 with up to 30 per cent of the allocation earmarked for provision of equity capital to selected small scale mining companies.
He suggested that stability agreements and special giveaways that were extended to multinational mining companies should give to the Small-Scale Mining companies to make them sustainable.
“As a key stakeholder in the mining industry, we find the plans of Government towards the sector quite bold and would be monitoring very closely to see to the realisation of these plans,” Mr Gbana, said.
Mr Gbana expressed worry about contract mining and called on all multinational mining companies engaged in this act and by extension the Chamber of Mines, to pay attention to this growing concern as that had the potential to threaten the stability of the industry in the not-too-distant future if nothing urgent and concrete was done about it.
“Astonishingly, this is happening at a time when the prevailing business environment is super favourable and should have reflected in the total wellbeing of the enterprise. Unfortunately, this is not the case because some of these business leaders running these multinational conglomerates would rather squeeze everybody especially the local entities and line their pockets with hefty bonuses rather than seek the total interest of all stakeholders,” Mr Gbana, said.
According to him, the mining job was hazardous and very energy-sapping and workers were generally predisposed or susceptible to accidents/incidents.
The Deputy General Secretary of the Trades Union Congress, Ghana, Joshua Ansah, in his solidarity message entreated the National Executive Committee to come out with resolutions that would help promote the mining industry.
BY KINGSLEY ASARE
