Towards the latter days of the Yahya Jammeh regime, an increase in mining activities was observed especially in the Greater Banjul Area. The government then did what can only be referred to as a half-hearted effort to stop or control these mining companies before they caused irreparable damage to the environment.
Of course this did not have any meaningful impact as one of the companies then was owned by the then president himself, Yahya Jammeh. So these companies continued to mine sand and other resources to the detriment of the local people in the areas in which they did their work. A lot of environmental damage was caused as it was not regulated and no one seemed to bothered at the time.
With the change of government in 2017, the Barrow-led government took charge and environmentalists thought that things will change so that the ecosystem of the country will be protected. With a new minister in charge of environment, everyone hoped that strict measures will now be put in place to ensure that whoever does mining in the country will be monitored so that they do not continue to cause damage to the environment.
However, since the coming into office of the current government, many scandals have surfaced which were related to mining. There was this Chinese fish factory known as Golden Lead which was said to be causing havoc in some of the coastal villages. A lot of noise was made but it did not lead to anything.
Now again, the Gambia Environmental Alliance (GEA), a civic society group advocating for the protection of the environment, has called for an immediate moratorium on all sand and mineral mining operations in the country. They argued that such a move is urgent and justifiable given the level of destruction caused by mining to most part of the country’s coastline.
The Republic, an investigative newspaper, recently revealed detailed allegations of systemic corruption, environmental abuse and government failure in the coastal mining sector. Thus they called for an independent environmental audit of all sites affected. This they argued should be done with community participation.
Perhaps it’s high time that any inquiry went deeper than just the mining companies and got up to the level of licensing. Who is authorising these mining companies? What are they gaining from it? Is it good for the country? When all these questions are answered, then policies should be formulated to guide the mining activities in the country.
