The Ghana Police Service says it has conducted a series of anti-galamsey operations in various communities affected by illegal mining activities, since the fight against the canker started in March, this year.
A statement posted on its Facebook wall said in a special anti-galamsey operations conducted at Samreboi, along the Tano River, Wassa Dunkwa, Tigarikrom and surrounding communities – all in the Western Region, personnel arrested fifty-eight (58) suspects comprising fifty (50) Ghanaians and eight Chinese, in connection with illegal mining activities and retrieved eighty five (85) excavators and three (3) bulldozers.
Similar exercises carried out in all the mining regions where suspects and their mining equipment, including excavators, were seized.
First of all, The Chronicle commends the police for the decisive actions they have taken to clamp down on the illegal miners. But much as this is appreciable, the police themselves will admit that this is not the first time they have conducted such swoops.
They collaborated with the military in the past to swoop on these illegal miners, where they were even burning excavators, but at the end of the day, nothing substantial was achieved.
The turbidity levels of the polluted water bodies rather went high. Even with the recent renewed efforts by both the government and security agencies, Rivers Prah, Ankobra, Tano, Birim and Offing are still dirty and have not improved.
It is upon this basis that The Chronicle sees this latest action against the illegal miners as an old wine in new bottle. The arrests will be made all right, but the most important thing in the whole equation – the turbidity levels of the rivers – will remain same. The illegal miners and their financiers seem to have developed a strategy of going back to their pits a few days after the police swoop.
And they are succeeding in this enterprise because of these loopholes they (miners) have found in the whole operations of the police – failure to go back after successfully driving out the illegal miners. With the rains almost here with us, the police and in fact all those who have been tasked to stop the illegal mining menace have the duty to prove to Ghanaians that they are indeed working if all the rivers turn blue.
This is the only yardstick we can use to measure the performance of the taskforce. If at the end of the day, the police have managed to arrest thousands of illegal miners and seize their equipment, but the turbidity levels of the rivers remain same, they would have achieved nothing.
Just a few days ago, Mr Erastus Asare Donor, a reporter with Multi Media posted on his Facebook wall about a sad story at Konongo Odumasi where illegal miners have entered the town digging for gold.
As a matter of fact, they have even blocked one of the streets in the town just to facilitate their work. The big question is: has this obvious show of defiance by the illegal miners come to the attention of the police or not? If the answer is yes, what action have they taken and if No, why so, when they especially have duty posts in the town?
Of course, The Chronicle admits that sometimes they (police) are powerless, especially when the people behind the illegal miners are top government or party officials. This is what happened in the Akufo-Addo administration and at the end of the day the battle against illegal mining could not be won despite the government pumping millions, if not billions of cedis, into the operations of the various taskforces.
The Chronicle does not, however, want to believe that this is what is happening now. Indeed if this is the case – where politicians are doing illegal mining and preventing the police from stopping them – then there is no need to be conducting swoops and arresting people just for the cameras.
The police and the Mahama government can erase this perception from the minds of Ghanaians by working hard to ensure that the ecosystem of our water bodies have returned to normalcy. This is the only yardstick we can use to judge the work they are doing.
