Misleading information on Military’s role in fight against galamsey spreading in media – GAF

The Ghana Armed Forces have expressed concerns about some misleading reports in a section of the media on their work against illegal small-scale mining (Galamsey) activities in the country.

This concern was made known by Brigadier General Abraham Yeboah Nsiah, Acting Chief of Defence Intelligence, at a press briefing organized by the Ministry of Information to update the nation on the progress of the Military’s operation against mining in water bodies.

Earlier reports had it that a total number of two hundred Ghanaians had been arrested by the operation but Brigadier General Nsiah refuted these reports in a reply to a question from one of the pressmen present at the Briefing.

“Honourable Minster, the information that has been put out there is misleading. Before the operations started, there has been consultations and meetings and there were warnings of the operation beginning on that specific date and people were warned.

"And again, the operation was launched on a Wednesday and from our information, the people who live by the Pra river have a custom that says they don’t go to the river on Wednesdays so at the time of the operation, there were no locals there. There were only two Chinese who were arrested.

“So that information of two hundred Ghanaians arrested is never true.”

The operation which begun at 6am and ended 6pm on the first day, April 28, 2021, arrested only two Chinese nationals who gave their names as Wei Gung Yin and Wei Gung Ming. The two were arrested at Atieku – Twifo Praso in the Central Region.

The operation code-named “Operation Halt” was commissioned by the Ghana Armed Forces with support from the Ghana Police Service and the Ghana Immigration Service to halt the activities of illegal mining along the banks of major rivers in the country which pollutes these water bodies.

The operation was commissioned as one of the recommendations of the two-day National Consultative Dialogue on Small Scale Mining which took place on 14 and 15 April 2021. The dialogue recommended the State cleared the major rivers where illegal mining is taken place to save aquatic life and supply locals with safe drinking water.

A total of 200 men in uniform had been deployed to the galamsey areas to deal with the situation.