“We have about 10,000 illegal miners in the Obuasi area,” says AngloGold Ashanti’s (AGA’s) public affairs manager in Ghana, John Owusu. They are mainly immigrants from other regions, especially the Northern, Western and Central Regions.


The Obuasi mine has extensive underground sections and illegal miners take extreme risks in dangerous and cramped conditions. Some end up being crushed to death and in 2008 alone, nine bodies of illegal miners had been recovered from Obuasi by the end of September, when a combined team of the Ghana armed forces and police service began patrolling the perimeter of the site. The company says there has been a 95% reduction in thefts from the mine since then.


The government’s Minerals Commission has a plan to register the gangs, known as ‘galamsey miners’, and provide them with a concession area in which to work. But there is little enthusiasm for the proposal, despite the dangerous nature of the work.


“Goldfields Ghana have tried it, but it’s rather like inviting armed robbers into your house and asking them to stick to the outhouse, and steal from there,” says another AGA official, Reynolds Twumasi.


AGA’s latest annual report noted that the galamsey miners had had an adverse effect on operations at Obuasi: “These operators have threatened and assaulted our employees and contractors. Galamsey activity underground in the Adansi shaft pillar has the potential to close the shaft and put future investment in Obuasi in jeopardy. Copper theft (primarily electrical cable) has caused hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of damage and lost production.”


“They work in gangs of 40-50, mainly men between the ages of 25-45,” explains Owusu. “The women and children provide back-up services like washing and cooking, and carrying the ore back for processing. They can spend weeks underground, but they set light to cables, drill and blast without recourse to safety and environmental impacts.”


“Poverty is what drives them,” Owusu adds. “Lack of job opportunities, high unemployment and the loss of livelihoods as their lands are taken over or adversely impacted by AGA’s operations.”


But retrenchment is a factor too. AGA has fired 5,000 legal miners in the last ten years, and the alternative livelihood programmes offered by the company are too slow, when they can make a quick $2,000 from a lucky strike.


The retrenched workers use their inside knowledge to guide the syndicates into the labyrinth of the mines, which are as deep as 400 metres underground. Despite the hazards of sifting through tailings and slime dumps filled with mercury, arsenic and cyanide, and the imminent danger to life and limb, the artisanal miners see their profession as a noble one.


‘Chairman’ Musah Abdulai leads 6,000 galamsey miners in Prestea, in Ghana’s Western Region. On a recent visit to Accra he explained what drives his organisation. “Say you are going to Kumasi. Is it your intention that you are going to kill yourself?” he asked. “No! You are travelling and anything can happen. That doesn’t stop people from travelling, does it? More people die from car accidents than through accidents at our mines. But they are still travelling on our roads and government agencies are working with the transport agency to make travel safe. That’s exactly what we want government to do for us. This is how we want government to help us.”


Abdulai suggested that the government should support the galamsey miners “because unemployment is very high in Ghana and we are facing many problems. There are 6,000 of us; even if you have one wife and one boy, it means we support 6,000 times three people.”


While the multinationals have supported mining communities with what they call Alternative Livelihood Programmes, Abdulai rejected the idea that miners should take up activities like snail or poultry farming: “Do I look like I should be engaged in snail farming? Apart from that, how much can one earn to look after my family? I have to take my child to school. It won’t help. But anyway, it’s good for some people who are not young and strong, but not for a person like me. We need to engage in activities that bring good income. Many of the people in our community don’t even eat snails.”