Collapsing galamsey pit kills one, injures 9
One person died, while nine others were rescued from underground, when a galamsey (illegal mining) pit collapsed on them at Banda Nkwanta in the Northern Region at dawn on Monday.
Advertisement
It took the combined effort of community members and a police team to remove the trapped people from the collapsed pit.
All the nine people who survived the incident were rescued on Monday, while the only dead body was retrieved yesterday.
Sole casualty
The sole casualty, whose body has since been deposited at the government hospital at Bole-Bamboi, is yet to be identified.
As of press time yesterday, the rescue operation had come to an end.
24-hour operation
According to Assistant Superintendent of Police (ASP) Eric Awiadem, who led the police rescue team, it took the police nearly 24 hours to retrieve the body of the deceased on Monday.
He said when the police got to the scene, others had apparently been rescued already.
“We started removing the soil the whole of Monday until we saw the one who was supposed to be the only remaining person in the pit today,” he said.
Eyewitness
An eyewitness said the illegal miners had entered the pit the previous night, as they made use of their ‘shift’ in the gold-laden site.
The pit, however, caved in at dawn when they were expected to be getting ready to leave.
Nana Gyansie III, the Chief of Teselima, an adjoining community to Banda Nkwanta, told the Daily Graphic yesterday that human activities had returned to normalcy, in spite of the shock that engulfed Banda Nkwanta and neighbouring communities.
The Assembly Member for the area, Mohammed Bawa, said he got wind of the incident at dawn of Monday and quickly mobilised community members to begin the rescue mission even before the police arrived.
Banda Nkwanta, on the Wa-Wenchi route, has become one of the mining enclaves for galamsey operators in the Northern Region.
Indeed, its resourcefulness stretches from the Bui Game Reserve in the Northern Region, where large deposits of gold have been discovered and mined illegally over the years.