The erection of unauthorized structures on Newmont Gold Ghana Limited’s mining area is stalling expansion works of its Tailings Storage Facility (TSF) Project.
Engulfed by the hushed and greenery scenery at Dokyikrom, in the Asutifi North in the Ahafo region, sits hundreds of the speculative structures made from metallic roofing sheets.
The illegal structures numbering over 300 however do not serve as a home or sleeping place for their owners but an abode for weeds sprouting from the ground.
As these speculative structures continue to spring up, their owners anticipate huge compensations, a practice that actors in the mining industry are displeased with.
Speaking with Journalists for Business Advocacy (JBA) who visited the community to witness first-hand the level of speculative structures being erected, the Director of External Relations and Communication of the Ghana Chamber of Mines, Ahmed Nantogmah, bemoaned that speculative activities are bad for the mining industry, adding that the behaviour of these individuals is delaying the compensation process and holding everyone to ransom.
This is not good for investment; the more mining projects delay due to speculative structures, the more it affects Ghana’s mining income. I think we need to work together as stakeholders to try and resolve this for peace sake,” he lamented.
Without the tailings facility expansion, where water and waste that come as by products from the mining process are stored, the mining company cannot tail anymore which may likely affect productivity.
Newmont, however, says it is working around the clock to address the delays to ensure that work progresses. The company has begun compensation and resettlement process to resettle those directly impacted by the project.
The Manager of Communications and External Relations of Newmont Africa’s Ahafo South and North Mines, Samuel Osei assured that “For us at Newmont, we are committed to working within the regulatory framework to ensure that those impacted by our projects are adequately resettled”.
Osei explained that the resettlement is to ensure that if ever there is any impact from the tailings dam, the people do not suffer.
And per the Minerals and Mining Act, the communities that are closed to the TSF must be resettled and compensated. However, the mining company must resettle the people who have structures and are living in them. For instance, if someone has a house, and that person is living in that house, the company will rebuild a house for that person somewhere else and move him or her.
Cut-off date
Prior to the construction of the tailings dam expansion, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) directed the company to declare a cut-off date of 5th of July 2019 but this was moved to the 9th of July 2019 since the communication did not reach the community on earlier date.
Cut-off date means that from that day all the properties in the project area, whether they are houses, farms and all that will not be increased. Nobody can build any more houses, and farms among others. They cannot even extend their facilities.
So, what the company did was that it captured everything that was there with drone shots to cover all the properties that were there.
However, immediately after the cut-off date was announced and the people got to know that they will be resettled, others started building what mining industry watchers call speculative structures. Meanwhile, per the Minerals and Mining Act, mining operator(s) cannot pay for buildings structures or properties that were established, erected, or built after the cut-off date.
The EPA assessed the issues and said the owners of the speculative structures do not deserve any compensation. Because there is enough evidence to prove that all the rest structures were not there before the cut-off date.
Accra meeting to address the issues
At the meeting, the EPA said in the interest of peace (similar to the Ahafo North issue) Newmont Africa should try and give them a token.
At that meeting, it was even agreed that the token should be something that would discourage people from engaging in speculative activities in the future.
The community members who engaged in the speculative activities agreed that they would take the token offered by Newmont. However, as soon as they returned to their communities, they changed their position and demanded for full compensation.
The meeting at the Alisa was attended by the EPA, Newmont, the affected mining community members, chiefs, the DCE, the district police commander and leaders of the communities.
When the cut-off date of 5th July 2019 was declared the buildings and structures on the expansion area were few at that time, officials of Newmont Africa told a team of JBA members who visited the Dokyikrom-Tutuka community.
The structures both habitable and non-habitable Newmont recorded were over 800. The bone of contention now is some of the over 800 structures have been extended. “Just using the drone footage, we estimated that about 300 structures have been added that we haven’t even touched.
So, it is not just the addition, but those that existed once they were inventories, and we had the codes. They added those structures more to attract more money”.
Like you have a two-bedroom house and extend it to a four-bedroom house. The communities are also asking Newmont to extend the cut-off point limit to areas that the project doesn’t reach.
