There was chaos at the Anyinam police station 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 the site supervisor together with others had reportedly diverted the flow of the Birim River and were busily mining a few meters behind the Anyinam police station when they were nabbed.

The National Executives of the Ghana National Association of Small-Scale Miners together with their task force matched the suspects to the police station to hand them over to the security operatives but were met with fierce resistance from other illegal miners in the community who had massed up at the Anyinam police station.

One Koshow, a known miner in the community engaged the task force in a heated confrontation which almost escalated.

The angry community members and illegal miners who threatened to further engage the team at the premises of the police station were later calmed by the Anyinam Police Commander, DSP Iddrisu Mahama.

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.”