Minister for Lands and Natural Resources, Samuel Abu Jinapor has directed the Minerals Commission to decentralize its operations to ease the process of acquiring licenses.
He said the long distances that miners have to travel to Accra and the bottlenecks in the licensing regime is what has pushed a lot of people to go into illegal mining.
He said the whole licensing regime must be look at again.
Interacting with staff of the Minerals Commission, Mr Jinapor pledged his cooperation and support for the commission so as to bring sanity into the mining sector.
Mr Jinapor said a National Consultative meeting announced by the President to dialogue on the way forward in dealing with small scale mining will come off on the 18th of April.
He said he is hopeful, at the end of the dialogue a lasting solution will be found to the activities of small scale illegal mining in the country.