Stop people ruining the Ghanaian coastline by mining sand from the beach

"Sand winners" are people or companies that take sand from the beach front, and sell it on. This is completely illegal in Ghana as it ruins the environment, the beaches and tourism. For many years, sand winners have been taking trucks loads of sand from the beach fronts near Elmina almost EVERY DAY in industrial volumes! 

Where you could walk down a gentle slope to the beach, in places you now have to jump down a 2 metre cliff. The coastline between Brenu and Elmina was one of the most beautiful in Ghana, with miles of wide sandy beaches. As over 1500 cubic metres of sand was being removed every day, the land has eroded, and the beach is almost non-existent. Hotel resorts which provide valuable employment to local people and help to build the tourism trade, benefiting Ghana, the pathways used by local people from villages like Ankwanda to walk with their market produce to Elmina, all are in serious jeopardy.

What was a beautiful natural asset for Ghana, has now become an environmental disgrace. Although the practice of sand winning is completely illegal all the local and regional institutions seemed unable or unwilling to control the situation; the law seemed to count for nothing, and every day the erosion become worse. After over 3 years of campaigning, we have finally succeeded in getting the attention of relevant Ministers and a National Security task force have blocked the paths used by the trucks to get to the beach fronts.

If you want to see the beautiful Ghana beaches protected, and if you want the Ghana law to act as it should, please sign this petition so that we use it to push the Ministers for Environment, Tourism, Trade, Housing and Mines to ensure beach front sand winning is stopped every where in Ghana. Please also take a moment to write a message which will be sent to the Ministers, so that we can continue to put pressure on them to enforce the law.