Dear NAIMOS and EPA
I write as a concerned citizen to question, and suggest some strategies, for our country’s long-standing approach to fighting illegal mining; the same approach we’ve recycled since the early 1980s: arrest, seize, burn, and leave.
Every few years, we launch another “operation” with our gallant men, sometimes jointly, and other times solely. We risk the lives of our forces to arrest dozen miners, destroy excavators, and announce victory. For a few weeks or months, we hail the successes with a false believe that our rivers will begin to clear, and our forests begin to reafforest. But soon after, the miners return, sometimes more desperate and more destructive than before. This cycle has repeated for over four decades. It has never solved the problem, yet we keep doing it.
Where has this strategy ever worked in Africa, or anywhere in the world? The truth is, it never has, because it focuses on symptoms, not causes.
After each raid, your teams leave the very same communities without jobs, without alternatives, and without security presence. The rivers we temporarily “save” are left in the hands of the Blue Water Guards with limited capacities to protect them and their tributaries. The youth who lost their equipment and livelihoods simply go back, often under new financiers or in even riskier sites. Meanwhile, the destroyed excavators and burnt machines become symbols of waste rather than deterrence.
I wouldn’t go back.
Between 5-10 October 2025, your team reported that in a coordinated operations across four hotspots (Gangway/Aboso, Ankobra River, Tano Anwia Forest, Cape Three Points Forest Reserve. You reported that there were 28 arrests and “heavy equipment seized”. At the gangway site, you said “hundreds” surrendered, and suspects were arrested.
You again reported on 23 October 2025 of another operation at the Oda River Forest Reserve in Ashanti Region in which 15 persons were arrested (including 9 armed imposters). You did arrest also on 4 November 2025, seven Chinese illegal miners at Akango in the Evalue-Gwira District, Western Region.
The list goes on and on. Despite the above reports, many key operational and follow-through details are missing. Here are questions I seek clarity from you:
- The 28 arrested in the October 5-9 operation: are they in custody, charged, released, or awaiting trial? The 15 arrested at Oda River Reserve: what legal status do they have now? The seven Chinese miners, what is their current detention/prosecution status? Without this info, arrests become headline fodder rather than meaningful deterrents.
- After equipment is seized/destroyed, is there a forward operating base, patrols, monitoring posts, or local community surveillance in place? For example, the report of the Offin Shelterbelt operation states that miners escaped. What happens immediately after the raid to prevent re-entry? Your reports also say “site closed down” or “equipment destroyed” but your reports do not often say how long enforcement remains or what are the ongoing monitoring mechanisms.
- After the raid at, say, Ankobra River or Tano Anwia Forest, what program has been put in place for local youth or displaced miners? Are there rehabilitation or restoration efforts (e.g., filling pits, reforesting, repairing polluted rivers) connected with the raids?
- Are there statistics showing that cleared sites remain clear after 3-6-12 months? Have water-body pollution levels improved? Have mines not returned?
- You say some equipment are often seized. Are those machines, including the cars, destroyed, stored, repurposed, sold? Or the people are made to pay a fine and returned to them? If yes, why is that process not transparent?
- Are local authorities, chiefs, community vigilantes engaged post-raid? If yes, is there any update to share with the public?
I suggest that a smarter, sustainable path forward would be:
- Stay after the raids.
Do not leave once excavators are burned. Establish forward operating bases in cleared areas staffed by the army, EPA officers, Minerals Commission agents, and police, to maintain a presence. This alone will stop immediate re-entry. Then set up military or security drone hubs along our key rivers such as Pra, Ankobra, Offin, Birim to provide continuous aerial monitoring. Drones can help track illegal dredgers before they destroy whole sections of water bodies. - Create real economic alternatives.
I hate to say this, because these miners are people who have been exposed to real cash, and they have lived their lives as such, so jobs that will provide small cash returns wouldn’t budge. So provide platforms in rural areas that discusses the need for a reorientation, for those who wish to exit. Then work with the Minerals Commission, District Assemblies, and private partners to launch rural enterprise and agro-livelihoods programmes for these people. You can open a register that is not politically tilted to receive these miners. Give young people something to do other than digging riverbeds. For those who wish to remain miners, register them in a database, with details on whose small-scale mining concession they are working. - Transparency and accountability.
After every operation, publish data on:
- Number of people arrested and prosecuted
- Equipment seized or destroyed
- Sites monitored afterward
- Steps taken to support affected communities
Ghanaians deserve to know what happens after the cameras leave.
- Partner with communities.
Let local assemblies and traditional authorities lead in monitoring and rehabilitation. Turn ex-miners into part of the solution, hire them to refill pits, plant trees, and restore degraded land.
The Hard Truth
The agencies burning machines will not clean our rivers. Arrests without rehabilitation will not end galamsey. And raids without follow-up are not strategy; they are public theatre. We need a new approach: one that stays, builds, and sustains. One that pairs firm enforcement with genuine rural development. One that uses intelligence, not just intimidation. Until that happens, Ghana will keep going in circles; rivers polluted, forests lost, lives wasted. We can do better. The country deserves better.
Sincerely,
www.galamseydata.com