BREAKING NEWS- Ghana is starting to expel the illegal Chinese miners. Will keep you updated. Weds Mar 27
Why are children used to dig gold in Ghana? Because they have no choice. Of course, it this is the same old thing--child labor. Chinese mining companies are illegally in Ghana exploiting Ghana's mineral resources, ruining the environment, exploiting the laborers and more. Children are working at these mines. Let's stop this.
When a patch of land on the edge of Nweneso No. 1 village was bought
by a Ghanaian who said he wanted to search for gold, few residents
objected. Then dozens of Chinese moved in with excavators, wrecking
farmland and turning the local stream into a trickle of mud.
The biggest gold companies operating
in Ghana are Greenwood Village, Colorado-based Newmont Mining Corp.,
which is developing its second mine in the country, and Johannesburg’s
AngloGold Ashanti Ltd. and Gold Fields Ltd.
“The Chinese destroyed our
land and our river, they are sitting there with pick-ups and guns,
plenty of guns,” Maxwell Owusu, acting chief of the village in the
central Ashanti region, said last month. “They operate big machines and
it makes it very difficult to reclaim the land for farming when they are
done.”
As global gold prices climb amid economic uncertainty in Europe, Ghana is facing an influx of illegal small-scale miners from China using machinery villagers say they can’t afford. The operations are raising concern over environmental damage in Africa's second-biggest gold producer and sparking anger among Ghanaians who say
they sold their farmland without knowing Chinese gold miners would move
into camps nearby.
Africa
The
Sahel region of Africa: Burkina Faso and Niger
Child
labour in gold mining, or orpaillage as it is called locally, is
widespread and increasing in Burkina Faso and Niger. As much as one quarter
of all children in the world who work in mines are in a region of the
Sahel common to these two countries. The reason for this is partly economic,
partly social. The droughts of the 1970s and 1980s set off a downward
spiral of poverty which, in turn, disrupted communities and families to
such an extent that children previously protected by traditional customs
and structures became a resource like any other that could be used to
increase income.
Much
of the small-scale gold mining in the Sahel is casual, seasonal and informal.
Estimates have shown that children under 18 may constitute up to 30-50
per cent of the entire orpailleur workforce (estimated at between
200,000 and 500,000 across the two countries). Approximately 70 per cent
of the children are under the age of 15, indicating that children start
working from a young age.
The
majority of children come from villages within the area, often within
10 km of the site, although a substantial number travel considerable distances
within or even outside the country. Children who choose to migrate to
the site with friends, peers, sponsors or even on their own usually end
up having to fend for themselves. An unknown percentage of children at
the mining sites have been trafficked as well. Non-local children are
particularly vulnerable to abuse and deceit by adult orpailleurs and
tend to work full-time in the pits and for longer hours than other children
whose parents are present. Foreign girls in the orpaillage communities
(usually Ghanaian or Togolese) may have come with a person who promised
them work in a petty trade. Once at the mining site, however, many of
these foreign girls are abandoned and turn to prostitution in order to
survive.
Ghana Chief
Virtually
all gold-mining communities in the Sahel are in remote, exceedingly poor
rural areas. They are rough places without sanitation, health services
and regular access to clean water. These unorganized and usually temporary
settlements have virtually no public facilities. Schools, if they exist,
are many kilometres away. Nevertheless, in Niger and Burkina Faso many
families accompany their men to these sites. Thus, a number of children
are born and grow up in mining settlements. Left to themselves while their
parents work and without school or supervised sports, children easily
become involved in mining or other forms of child exploitation. These
problems are exacerbated during “gold rushes” when migrant miners converge
around a freshly discovered site. Poor living and working conditions mean
that all young children are exposed to infections and diseases caused
by unclean water and lack of sanitation and complicated by malnutrition,
Dysentery, diarrhoea, malaria, meningitis, measles, tuberculosis and other
parasitic and viral infections are common. In Burkina Faso and Niger,
children are engaged in almost all aspects of the mining operation, from
rock breaking and transport to washing, crushing/pounding and mineraldressing.
Children are particularly “useful” in underground gold deposits as their
small size and agility allows them to more easily work in the narrow shafts
and galleries.
Girls
as well as boys undertake heavy work, although it is more likely that
boys will work underground, while girls stay on the surface. Work for
both involves the transport, crushing, washing and processing of rock.
Typically, children under 10 years old tend to be given less arduous tasks,
such as petty trading, pushing water carts and working as messengers.
Regular, full-time work usually begins between the ages of 12 to 14 years.
Children often work every day, although they occasionally get to rest
for a day at the weekend. Working hours are extremely variable – from
8 to 14 hours – but almost always at least 6-8 hours per day (occasionally
the children actually sleep underground). In many cases, children have
insufficient time to rest and inadequate food and water. Again, those
without parents are particularly at risk, having nowhere to secure a decent
meal or safe place to rest before returning to work.
Although
children are often expected to do the same work as adults, they invariably
receive less pay. Most often, remuneration for children is a combination
of in kind and cash payments. Others are not paid but work simply for
food, shelter and security. For those that are paid, the cost of food,
tools and medication may be deducted from their earnings such that they
are left with virtually nothing. Those working with their parents are
seen as simply providing an extra pair of hands to share the workload
and are therefore not paid directly. Underground, the children are often
forced to undertake exceedingly strenuous work under very hazardous conditions.
Most of the tools and equipment they use are primitive and heavy, requiring
considerable strength to wield effectively that constantly strains children’s
bodies.
The
“get-rich-quick” mentality that pervades mining sites undermines conventional
norms of social conduct. Many young boys resort to alcohol (both commercial
and locally brewed) or narcotics (especially amphetamines and marijuana)
in the belief that it makes them stronger and more able to cope with the
harshness of the underground environment and work. Even those that initially
resist taking drugs often succumb to peer pressure. For young girls there
are other threats, especially for those without the protection of their
families. These include sexual assault, teenage pregnancy and sexually
transmitted diseases, especially HIV/AIDS. Such health risks are augmented
by sexual promiscuity and misguided local beliefs that orpailleurs will
have greater luck in the pits if they have int ercourse with a virgin
or have unprotected intercourse and do not wash before going underground.
Ghana
Small-scale
mining in Ghana, referred to locally as “galamsey” (gather and sell),
has been on the increase since the early 1980s. An estimated 10,000 children
are involved in various parts of the country, m uch of it in gold mining.
Small-scale
mine operators principally engage children between ages 10 and 18 years
old who are paid minimal daily wages. These children perform all sorts
of low-skilled tasks, including building trenches, carrying loads of gold
ore on their heads to washing sites (done largely by girls), washing the
ore (done largely by boys), amalgamating the gold using mercury, and selling
the product.
Although
there have been efforts to regularize small-scale mining in the country
in the past 15 years to improve conditions, most sites are still unregistered
and illegal. They tend to be set up on private land, sometimes encroaching
on concessions of legitimate mining firms. Galamsey not only involves
surface mining, but also underground mining in abandoned shafts, exposing
those involved to additional deadly hazards – flooding, cave in and toxic
fumes.
Originally
the domain of unemployed youths looking to earn quick money, the practice
has grown over the years and now attracts local people of all ages and
migrants, principally adult men unaccompanied by spouses. The problem
has been compounded in some areas by increased unemployment in farming
caused by the loss of farmland to legitimate mining operations or to small-scale
miners who essentially squat it. School dropout is a widespread problem
in mining areas in Ghana. As most of the children involved come from poor
homes, they initially start mining part time to help pay school fees with
the consent or their parents. Many end up abandoning school altogether
as the attraction of making money, even very little, is stronger than
their perception of any long-term benefits of continued schooling. Given
the relatively short life spans of most small-scale mining sites, these
children will eventually find themselves unemployed and without skills
for finding other jobs.
The
expansion of small-scale mining and the increase in migrant labour to
these areas has been associated with an increase in prostitution, often
involving girls as young as 12 years old. This has inevitably led to increased
teenage pregnancies, single parenting, and sexually transmitted diseases,
particularly HIV/AIDS.
*Full Bibliography available
