High Street Ghana Limited, the company at the centre of mining at the Kakum National Park controversy, applied for a mining lease to embark on large-scale mining, the Minerals Commission has said.
Some civil society organisations (CSOs) in the country have expressed reservations about an attempt to mine in the Kakum National Park in the Central Region.
The Minerals Commission has explained the application was outrightly rejected.
Appearing on the Asaase Breakfast Show on Tuesday (14 November), chief executive officer of the Minerals Commission Martin Ayisi said the application by High Street was outrightly rejected considering where they had wanted to mine.
“They had applied for a mining lease; it means they had every information to embark on mining. The law allows that you can either apply for a prospecting or on the basis of some geological information apply to mine. So you need to bring a supporting document to justify and that was done.”
“They were coming for a large-scale mineral right in this particular case a mining lease. They submitted their application online, so when we checked, we realised that it falls within the Kakum National Park and that is not an area we can even process,” Ayisi said.
Ayisi further questioned why the civil society organisations failed to cross-check the reports with the Minerals Commission before going ahead to publicly register their displeasure with the application by High Street.
Listen to Martin Ayisi in the attached audio clip below:
Reporting by Fred Dzakpata in Accra
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