Ghanaian broadcast journalist and host of Angel FM’s Morning Show, Okatakyie Kwame Afrifa-Mensah, has revealed that some NPP ‘big boys’ are heavily involved in galamsey.
This revelation comes as quite a shocker considering the fact that the NPP government has positioned itself as a strong advocate in the fight against galamsey in their campaigns and with their anti-galamsey policy.
In an interview on The KSM Show, Afrifa told KSM, “This very recent one that we arrested them, it’s actually one of the big boys in our party – my party, that had gone in to bring them just a few months ago to destroy our lands and I’m like ‘are we crazy’?”, referring to the recent arrest he caused of two Chinese galamseyers some weeks back on the Tano river.
“There’s a river called Tano Anwia river. That Anwia river is one of the adjoining rivers of the Tano river and these people had heaped a huge pile of sand in the whole of that river. Not even that they’re pumping it to a certain pond which ordinarily is the practice, but now what they do is that they block the way of the river just so the river will get dry because they say that’s where the gold is”, he explained.
According to the broadcast journalist cum anti-galamsey advocate, “The police is aware, National Security is aware, BNI is aware, the military is aware but nobody is doing anything. They’re all aiding these foreigners to destroy our lands”.
Afrifa noted that due to excessive mining activities on the Tano river, the water body is gradually depleting and further warned that if proper steps are not taken to reclaim it, Ghanaians should not expect to see anything called Tano river here in Ghana in the next two years.
Okatakyie Afrifa has taken upon himself to champion the fight against galamsey, from calling out people involved to investigating and monitoring to have galamseyers arrested. About two weeks ago, he caused the arrest of two Chinese galamseyers on the River Tano.
