President of the Small Scale Miners Association, Michael Kwadwo Peprah, has apologised and retracted his comments about the involvement of bigwigs in illegal mining locally known as ‘galamsey’.
This comes a few days after he was reportedly picked up by personnel from the National Security.
The arrest, Mr Peprah confirmed, was effected on Friday morning at a time he had just finished preparing breakfast for his kid at his home in Kumasi.
However, he stated details of what transpired could not be made public but he would rather retract his comments.
“In my statement, I made some claims that there are some Chinese kingpins who are into illegal mining and most of them use vehicles embossed with stickers from the Office of the President.
“I want to categorically retract and apologise to the Office of the President and the security agencies in the country,” he said in an interview on Accra-based Neat FM.
When asked whether his retraction and apology were due to intimidation he suffered during the arrest, Mr Peprah responded, “I don’t want to comment on that.”
Following the return of galamsey queen, Aisha Huang to Ghana after her deportation, Mr Peprah made damning allegations about support of higher authorities which has empowered Chinese nationals for galamsey.
He claimed the powerful people behind Miss Huang transferred an Immigration Officer to stop him from pursuing the matter.
He among other things alleged there are Chinese nationals who are mining in Ghana’s forest reserves under the protection of State security such as the military.
