A team of 60 police officers from Ho last Thursday swooped on the dense and vast forest of Peki Dzake in the South Dayi District in the Volta Region and destroyed two marijuana plantations, covering a total of eight acres.
Each of the farms had a wobbly structure from which the occupants fled deeper into the forest before the police arrived at the plantations.
Among those who fled from one of the farmsteads were three men and a woman.
The policemen and women, armed with machetes, cut down the plantations before burning the heaps of marijuana with lorry tyres.
It emerged that the marijuana farmers were also cutting the trees in the forest at an alarming rate, for burning charcoal.
The marijuana seeds are used as poultry feed while the sheep graze on the marijuana plants in the forest.
The farmers mix the dry harvest of marijuana with charcoal before transporting the contraband to the urban centres.
One man who was spotted carrying a hunting gun in the forest at a distance from the marijuana plantations had the weapon seized by the police.
Tip-off
Briefing journalists later, the Volta Regional Police Commander, DCOP Wisdom Akorli, said the operation followed a tip-off.
He said a mop-up exercise would soon be carried out in the forest at Peki-Dzake to ensure the total destruction of the marijuana plants and seedlings in the enclave.
Meanwhile, the DCOP Akorli said a serious search for the fugitive farmers was underway.
“We will arrest and process them for court,” he affirmed.
DCOP Akorli said the exercise to destroy marijuana farms would be extended to other parts of the region.
He appealed to patriotic members of the public to volunteer information to the police, without delay, on those cultivating the weed, and gave an assurance the identities of the informants would be treated with utmost confidentiality.
