Chief Executive Officer of the Environmental Protection Authority (EPA), Professor Nana Ama Klutse, has said that the anti-galamsey team picked up intelligence from Accra that they should immediately leave the galamsey site when they went on the inspection in the Ashanti Region.
The intel even suggested that they redirected their route, she said while narrating the cause of the accident involving the journalists and the EPA staff.
Narrating the incident on the Ghana Tonight show on TV3 Thursday, November 6, she said, “As the operation we started yesterday (Wednesday, November 5), it’s a three-week plan that the EPA has, to ensure, especially the services that others provide for mining in our water bodies, which is illegal. We plan to tackle that aspect as well. So we realised that it is not just enough to say, stop mining in the river bodies, but we saw that we needed to deal with the suppliers.
“So we closed down many shops at the Anhwia Nkwanta, so today (Thursday, November 6) we were on another route to close down some other shops. On our way near Obuasi, we saw galamsey happening on the ground, so we decided to have a look at what they were doing. When we stopped and walked into the area, as we were getting closer, they were running away, and all of them had left by the time we got there.
“So we looked around for what we could pick, and we did pick. While leaving, we saw that there were actually more of the excavators, three, that were inside a river body; they had mined in the river and blocked the river in such a way that it had taken different tributaries around the area and flooded some places. It is messy. It was really a bad situation. So we had actually gone to the car and used another route to the place, and while we were there, the people also ran. We called them to come, and just before we could have a conversation, they sent news around, and so we saw built men; a number of them came with guns.
“We had the military with us, and the national security also were with us, but then we saw that we couldn’t exchange fire or we could not fight them, so we had to run for our lives. So in the course of running, speeding on the road, we encountered this accident.”
“One of the cars, which had some EPA staff and some of the journalists, had a head-on collision with the truck that is actually carrying some pipes for galamsey operations. Some of the heavily built men were dressed in black with CID written at the back, the soldiers asked and the national security men asked them for their ID Cards but it became confrontational, and so we had to leave because they said they cannot overpower them so we had to leave.
“While they were having the confrontation, we got intel from Accra that we should leave immediately, where we were and that even the route we planned to take, we should not use it again, and we should not return on the same route we came from Kumasi to Obuasi, so we had to use another route altogether. much longer through the western region, the central region to Kumasi, but just before we reached Kumasi, that’s when we had the head-on collision.”
She further appealed to the doctors and nurses who are handling the journalists and EPA staff involved in the accident to pay special attention to them.
She stated that they were involved in the accident while on a national duty, hence her call for special medical attention.
Professor Nana Ama Klutse said the victims suffered various forms of injury, including broken thighs, head injury and chest pains.
She said, “We thank God that we all have our lives now, it is just unfortunate that we have some injuries. The most critical one is a broken thigh, which is one of the Joy TV cameramen. Your correspondent Abubarkar has some chest pains, and he is responding to treatment. Adom TV’s correspondent had a head injury; he is also responding to treatment. Then we have some EPA staff who were also involved in the accident; they are all responding to treatment. We have discussed it with the doctors and nurses in charge to pay special attention to them because we were on a national assignment before this unfortunate incident happened.”
The incident occurred at Afari, following a violent encounter with illegal miners near Obuasi.
Reports indicate that the convoy of the EPA team was initially attacked by a group of illegal miners at Dadwene, a community near Obuasi. The severity of the attack reportedly forced the EPA team and the accompanying media personnel to retreat.
The subsequent accident, which happened later at Afari, has left several people injured. Among the journalists involved was Ibrahim Abubakar, the Ashanti Regional Correspondent of Media General, but he is fine.
Speaking to the news desk for an update, reporter William Evans-Nkum clarified the apparent geographical discrepancy between the site of the attack and the accident.
Sources: 3news.com
