Mining Affected Communities Fight MMDAs Over Neglect In Use Of Minerals Dev’t Fund

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Mining Affected Communities Fight MMDAs Over Neglect In Use Of Minerals Dev’t Fund

Despite a large mining sector and a well-structured mineral revenue distribution system, mining affected communities are among the poorest in Ghana. In order to accelerate and promote socio-economic development in these mining affected communities, in 2016, the Parliament of Ghana passed the Minerals Development Fund Act.

The Act seeks to address existing challenges in the allocation and utilisation of mineral royalties and its potential in promoting development in Ghana’s mining affected communities. A study has shown that the Act is missing the opportunity to address misuse of mineral royalties and to encourage local participation and increase transparency and accountability in mineral royalty management.

A study conducted by Atuburoah (2019) to examine mining affected communities’ participation in the utilization of the Mineral Development Fund (MDF) has shown that most citizens of mining communities affected have no knowledge of the existence of this fund.

It is therefore anticipated that community members made little or no input on decisions about what projects that will be more beneficial to the communities and must be executed by Assemblies using the MDF.

In order to address the challenge, WACAM in partnership with Ford Foundation and the International Budget Partnership (IBP) is currently implementing a project aimed at promoting the participation of mining affected communities in the utilization of mineral revenues allocated to the communities.

At a stakeholder’s forum organised by WACAM in Sunyani, some members of the Communities affected by mining in Tarkwa Nsuaem Municipality, Prestea-Huni Valley and Asutifi North Districts have argued zealously that the assemblies do not involve them in the decision-making process with respect to the utilization of the Mineral Development Fund.

According to them, most of the members of the communities have little or no knowledge of the existence of the Mineral Development Fund and therefore made no input on decisions about what projects that are essential to the affected communities.

The Associate Executive Director of WACAM, Mrs Hannah Owusu Koranteng in her presentation Mining and Development said over reliance on extractive sector as the process by which development can be realised without setting up required linkages will just drain the universe of its shared natural capital.

According to her, in many developing countries, revenues from value natural resources such as oil and gas, gold, manganese, diamonds, and timber are an integral part of the national economy adding that, despite abundant natural resources, however, these countries are often characterised by the ‘resource curse’: slow economic growth, weak political institutions and even violent conflict.

She noted that irresponsible mining has displaced many community people creating problems of landlessness and joblessness in affected communities. This, according to her, has increased the marginalisation of affected people and led to food insecurity, breakdown of social systems and access to common resources and public service.

Presenting his research on affected Communities participation in the utilisation of the Mineral Development Fund in the Tarkwa-Nsuaem Municipality, Mr Yaw Atuburoah, said most community members who have knowledge about the MDF argued that they are not well involved in the decision-making process with the respect to the utilisation of the fund.

According to him, his research has confirmed the statement made by Marfo et al, (2012) that decision on the use of the mineral revenues has been seized by the elite in the affected communities.

He therefore stressed the need for the Assemblies to engage the members of the mining affected communities in decision-making process in the utilization of the MDF.

In his submission, the Planning Officer of the Asutifi North District, James Ata-Era, said the Assemblies always make frantic effort to engage more community members, however resource constraint has limited their effort.

He revealed that there is no budget allocation in the mineral revenue fund for engagement, whilst community members also show no interest in town-hall meetings organised by the Assembly leading to low citizen’s participation.