He had already decided to leave, and was only waiting on his day’s wages, but unfortunately for him, the raid arrived first.
The mason from Sefwi said he had travelled to Osino because work at home had dried up, and a friend already at the site had called him over.
“I told my friend business wasn’t going well, so if he had any job, he should call me. He called me to come, and when I got here and found out this was the job, I said to myself that if I’m caught doing this, it won’t be good for me, because I don’t have anyone to help me in life, and I’m also not financially stable. So I planned to leave after receiving my wages for the day, only for the raid to happen.”
The mason was among the 13 people arrested when the National Anti-Illegal Mining Operations Secretariat (NAIMOS) raided an illegal mining site at Osino in the Eastern Region. Others arrested included a former construction worker and a 15-year-old boy, each with a different story of how they ended up there.
The former construction worker said he came to Osino two days earlier. He could only apologise for getting involved, struggling to find the right words to explain why he was there.
Fifteen-year-old Bernard said he was brought to the site by someone to work and raise money to support his education. Bernard, who is from Navrongo, said he arrived at the site and started work this morning.
Bernard isn’t the only student caught at the site as another young man said he is in SHS 3 and had come to work to get some money for school as his father is an old man who can’t do anything to help him.
Another man, who said he came from Kumasi three days ago, defended his decision to work there despite knowing it was illegal. To him, making about GH¢300 a day at the galamsey site is better than stealing.
“I know it’s not good, but when we stay home, we don’t earn anything, and coming here to get something small is better than stealing, and that is why we are here,” he said. “I make about GH¢250 or GH¢300 when I come here.”
He said he had noticed the site had been raided before he arrived, but had not realised how frequently it happened.
“When we came, we saw some ‘changfan’ machines had been destroyed, and when we asked, we were told there was a raid, but it doesn’t happen every day.”
He appealed to the authorities for leniency, promising not to return to the site.
NAIMOS said the Osino operation, in which mining equipment was destroyed, marked a return to the same site raided just days earlier, with officials finding illegal miners back at work despite the earlier crackdown.
Spokesperson for NAIMOS, Paa Kwesi Schandorf, said the recurrence underlines the need for a permanent security presence at illegal mining hotspots rather than periodic operations.
“It’s not the first day of an operation like this. We got the indication they were here four days ago, and they returned again,” he said.
He said communities around such sites remain divided, with some residents benefiting from the activity and others opposed to it, but that those against galamsey have continued to provide intelligence that helps enforcement teams identify operations.
