[ 2011-04-23 ]

A family starts digging in a waterlogged camp in Kenyasi

Gold mining thrives in Ghana, but people see little of returns
London (UK) – 23 April 2011 – The Times -
Beneath a dilapidated shack Frank Ofori leaps
casually into the entrance of a crumbling
mineshaft that plunges 200ft into the earth.

With a torch strapped to his head and three sticks
of dynamite in his back pocket he begins a
ten-hour shift underground in the Kenyase mine
camp, 200 miles (320km) north of Accra, where
thousands of prospectors risk their lives in the
hope of finding gold.

Mr Ofori skips over the wooden struts holding the
makeshift tunnel together and disappears into an
abyss.

Miners as young as 10 work in the squalid camp,
exploited by gangmaster gold dealers who force
them to endure back-breaking labour for less than
a few pounds a month. Every day they risk
suffocation, broken bones and injury from
uncontrolled explosions.

The camp is reached through a flooded dirt-track
carved into the rainforest, a busy thoroughfare
crammed with people carrying generators and mining
tools in wheelbarrows.

The sprawling shantytown in a clearing appears to
be pockmarked by shelling. Workers tread carefully
between the craters, that flood in the rainy
season. Only decayed logs and sandbags give away
where the mine entrances stand. At Kenyase there
are no health-and-safety controls. No one wears a
hard hat and at least 40 people died here last
year.

The camp has sprung up in the past few years. When
American company Newmont — one of the world’s
largest gold companies — moved in to the area,
thousands of prospectors followed. Mr Ofori spent
two years digging his mineshaft with only shovels
and pickaxes. “We usually go down there for ten
hours at a time,” he said. “We take food and
water with us. There is a network of tunnels
underground, going on for miles. There are
hundreds of us down there.”Across the site
anyone who isn’t digging is sifting through gold
ore. A mother with a baby strapped to her back
looks through discarded rocks for a thin, yellow
streak.

Teenage boys have abandoned their schooling to
shovel earth into metal basins that girls carry to
a clattering machine where the sludge is
filtered.

Ayishitu Mohammed, 13, spends every day carrying
heavy loads on her head through the opencast pit.
“I would like to be a nurse but I haven’t
finished at school,” she said. “That will
never happen now.”

Last week Newmont approved a new gold project in
Ghana. The Akyem mine is expected to produce 7.2
million ounces, with an annual output of up to
500,000 ounces. Such an immense undertaking will
make Ghana Africa’s second biggest producer,
after South Africa. Although gold accounts for 90
per cent of exports multinationals pay only 3 per
cent royalties.

The charity Action Aid said that Ghana lost £700
million between 1990 and 2007 by not making
companies to pay the maximum 12 per cent tax they
could have required. In 2005 this would have been
equivalent to paying off half the country’s
debt. Kwame Badassi, a dealer, holds up a lump of
rock containing a slither of gold. It has taken a
miner two months to find and is worth only £4.
“It is the big companies who have the biggest
gold deposits. We just get the scraps,” he
said.

Source - The Times(UK)

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