FIGHTING GALAMSEY: ADANSI KROFUOM DCE LEADS IN AN OPERATION TO ARREST GALAMSEYERS

Fighting galamsey, the District Chief Executive of Adansi Akrofuom in the Ashanti Region, Maurice Jonas Woode, has led an operation to arrest two illegal miners who were operating in the Supuma Forest near Betenase in the Akrofuom District.

He continued “however to our dismay, we had information that the illegal miners had pitched camp in the region with five sprinter buses and have been even fighting among themselves”.

The DCE in addition stated that they had tried on numerous occasions to clamp down on their activities but to no avail given that they no more used excavators but have adopted the metal detector system, that is mostly complex and becomes very hard for their operations to be noticed.

He continued that the miners upon getting wind of the presence of the operation team, fled, leaving their machines behind while luck ran out on two of their colleagues who were right away apprehended by the police.

LOGISTICS FOR FORESTRY GUARDS

Mr Jonas Woode appealed to the Ministry of Lands and Natural Resources to offer logistics for the Forestry Commision to allow them crack down on activities of the illegal miners who, he said, have adopted sophisticated strategies to perform their activities which has made fighting galamsey a herculean task.

The Assistant District Manager at the Bekwai office of the Forestry Commission, Palmer Amponsah, praised the DCE for his unwavering efforts to stop illegal mining in his District.He mentioned that though the Commission is doing its best to prevent the activities of illegal miners, their numbers are too small.

He called on the Ministry of Lands and Natural Resources to provide them with logistics to make fighting galamsey easier judging from the new methods adopted by the galamseyers

“Since using excavators by galamseyers has almost come to a halt, they have adopted using metal detectors which appear like bag. This is very difficult to detect.”

ASP Mahama Iddrisu, who’s in charge of Operations at the Obuasi Divisional Command, debunked the notion that the police find it difficult to prosecute galamseyers.

He opined that the police need hard core evidence to successfully prosecute illegal miners.

ASP Mahama Iddrisu, said “the major challenge we face in the prosecution of unlawful miners is the absence of hard core evidence in some instances. The court will usually set the accused free if the evidence found against him is not strong enough”.