The Operation Halt II team has arrested seven suspects found operating at an illegal mining site, popularly known as galamsey, and also engaging in other poor environmental practices at Mile 9 and other communities in the Amansie Central district of the Ashanti region.
The suspects, including six Chinese and a Ghanaian, were found engaging in illegal mining, in defiance of the government’s ban placed on these activities that continued to wreak havoc on the environment and water bodies, including the Offin River.
The Operation Halt II team has been in a sustained operation since June 6, 2023, patrolling the Apamprama Forest Reserve, Oda Forest Reserve, Bosomtwe Forest Range and other galamsey sites in the Amansie Central, Amansie South, Bekwai Municipal and Bosome Freho Districts all in the Ashanti region.
Those arrested were galamsey operators mining the off-reserve area of the Bosomtwe Range Forest, illegal mining sites and other unauthorised sites.
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The team has so far seized 30 excavators with some of them being decommissioned whilst other machines were also burnt by the team during the operation.
Some Changfan machines, water pumping machines, fuel storage tanks and other improvised mining equipment and structures were all affected.
The six Chinese arrested were handed over to the Immigration Officers in the Bekwai municipality whilst the excavators were taken to the central command of the Ghana Armed forces in Kumasi.
The Deputy Commander of the Operation Halt II, Lt. Col. Louis Boakye, said the exercise was to conduct confirmatory patrols in the areas visited.
“We are undertaking confirmatory patrols to check whether we have illegal miners within our forest reserves we visited last time,” he stated.
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He expressed worry over how the illegal miners have invaded the forest reserves and destroyed economic trees and water bodies posing a threat to farmers and security and appealed to the people to desist from nagative practice.
He assured “we fight to win and never give up.”
The Ring Leader of the Rapid Response Team of the Bekwai Forest District, Ebenezer Appiah, expressed serious concern about the way information is leaked to the galamsey operators when embarking on a patrol.
“We are doing our best to protect the forest reserves,” he said.
He said the continuous attacks on rapid reponse team by the illegal miners pose serious threat to members.
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By Benjamin Aidoo|AkomaFM|Onuaonline.com
