Two foreign nationals and a sub-chief have been arrested by the Akim Oda Divisional Police Command for allegedly engaging in illegal mining at Akyem Oda in the Birim Central Municipality.
The three suspects arrested at the mining site were taken to the Akim Oda Police Station before being granted police inquiry bail.
They are two Yemenis and a Ghanaian sub-chief.
However, the Akim Oda community mining project coordinator, Nana Owusu Agyekum, has denied that they are engaged in illegal mining.
At a press conference, he told journalists that the two Yemenis had only come to install components of a recycling machine and train his workers on how to use the machines that will be used for community mining.
“They are Yemenites, we are in a global world and as a businessman if you are able to write a good business proposal, you can lure any investor to your side. That is how we were able to partner them. We have been using so many mechanisms, and it’s not helping. So we decided to team up and buy this machine so that we can get good results in which our water bodies and lands will not be destroyed. No one is using this machine as of now in Ghana. The two Yemenites only came to install components of the recycling machine,” he said.
He also expressed his view on the activities of illegal miners saying “The equipment and everything that they use is very cheap, so anybody at all can go into mining provided they can get a land. Illegal mining is the cheapest way of doing mining. If we want to check the menace of galamsey, government has to stop people from importing chanfan machines, the cheapest machine they use to do galamsey. If you stop them, they will not get machines to do galamsey”.
By: Rainbowradioonline.com/Ghana
