The Akim Oda Divisional
Police Command has arrested two foreign nationals and a sub-chief for allegedly
engaging in illegal mining at Akyem Oda in the Birim Central Municipality.
The 3, a Ghanaian
sub-chief and two Yemenites who were picked up by the police at the mining site
were sent to the Akim Oda Police station before being granted police inquiry
bail.
The Akim Oda community
mining project Coordinator Nana Owusu Agyekum, who dispelled claims they were
engaging in galamsey said the two Yemenites only came to install components of
a recycling machine and train his workers on the use of the machines which will
be used for the community mining.
He addressed the media at
Asamankese shortly after he was released on bail.
“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 explained.
On the issue of the
galamsey fight, Nana Owusu Agyemang called on the government to permanently ban
the importation of chanfans.
“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,” he
opined.