75 'galamseyers' arrested in dawn swoop at Konongo Odumase
Seventy-five suspected illegal miners were arrested in Konongo-Odumase in the Asante Akyem Central municipality in the Ashanti Region on Monday.
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The suspects, made up of 70 men, including three 75-year-olds, and five women, have been placed in police custody at the Konongo Police Station, pending further investigations.
In a morning swoop, the National Anti-Galamsey Task Force, otherwise called Operation Vanguard, impounded 120 grinding machines, three excavators, several Shanfun machines, generators, air blowing machines, a saloon car, a motorbike and some mining equipment.
The arrest of the illegal miners followed a report by the Daily Graphic in its January 3, 2018 edition that illegal mining had resurfaced in the area, in spite of the government’s clamp-down on the practice.
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In an interview after the task force had arrested the miners, the Commander of Operation Vanguard, Colonel Amoah Ayisi, expressed shock at the fact that some residents of Odumase had dug holes in their rooms (in-house mining) to explore for gold.
He said apart from the danger in-house mining posed to the residents of such houses, any least earth tremor could lead to a shocking disaster in the area.
Time bomb
Col. Ayisi described the situation at Odumase as very terrible and that the people were sitting on a time bomb, since the entire Odumase community could collapse if the practice of in-house mining was not stopped immediately.
He appealed to the various stakeholders in the fight against illegal mining to lift their game, since many new tricks were being adopted to outwit the security forces.