Prioritise mining education to safeguard environment – CAPCOE  

Mr. Richard Kovey, the National Convenor, Campaign Against Privatization and Commercialization of Education (CAPCOE), says Ghana needs to develop a comprehensive mining educational system to train the youth in proper mining practices.Mr. Kovey told the Ghana News Agency (GNA) in an interview that the persistent menace of illegal mining commonly known as galamsey could be attributed to the failure of the educational system to teach the right mining practices over the years.He emphasised that Ghana needs to invest in the educational sector and train more youth in Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM) to be able to develop machines, apps, and other means to responsibly extract and add value to mineral resources for the country's benefit.Mr Kovey called on the government to create jobs such as coding, programming, and technical and vocational jobs that would absorb the youth engaged in galamsey, saying that through this, the youth would come out with the appropriate machines to work even when they want to go into mining.He called on Ghanaians to support Organised Labour's decision to go on strike, suggesting that the government must declare a state of emergency on all mining activities and then offer training to the youth in galamsey to prevent their involvement in social vices.The CAPCOE convenor said, that although the government might spend a lot in training and equipping the youth, the country would benefit hugely from it?when the youth become self-reliant and start contributing to national development.'For the meantime, there should be a system of training them in skills that can get jobs without necessarily waiting for someone to employ them, but they can take advantage of the spaces created within the technology to do something that is flexible and can fetch them money even more than what they are getting from risking their lives at galamsey sites,' he added.Source: Ghana News Agency