Aggrieved youth of Anyinam have clashed with the police at the Anyinam police station yesterday, Wednesday 8th February, 2023, following the arrest of two illegal miners by the Ghana National Association of Small-Scale Miners in the Atewa East District of the Eastern Region.
The two, an excavator operator and a site supervisor, had allegedly diverted the flow of the Birim River and were mining a few meters behind the Anyinam police station when they were apprehended.
The National Executives of the Ghana National Association of Small-Scale Miners, along with their task force, accompanied the suspects to the police station to hand them over to security operatives, but were met with fierce resistance from other illegal miners in the community, who had gathered at the Anyinam police station.
One Koshow, a well-known miner in the community, engaged the task force in a heated argument that nearly escalated.
The Anyinam Police Commander, DSP Iddrisu Mahama, later calmed the angry community members and illegal miners who threatened to further engage the team on the premises of the police station.
Godwin Armah who is the Secretary of the Ghana National Association of Small-Scale Miners narrated that his Association had to arrest the illegal miners because “the Minerals Commission will not give a license to anyone to mine close to a river or road, and so we had to arrest the operators and the excavator and hand them over to the police.”