A team of soldiers caused a stir when they set ablaze a house belonging to a small scale miner at Ntobroso in the Atwima Mponua District of Ashanti in an attempt to fight illegal gold mining.
Two containers full of provisions and a corn mill were among other properties destroyed by the fire.
The soldiers said they had gone to the community as part of operations to halt illegal gold mining (galamsey) activities.
Three of the equipment said to have been parked on the compound of one Akwasi Gyamfi were also reported burnt.
The Assemblyman for the area, John Kwabena Gyamfi, said that the soldiers arrived in the community at about 5:00am on Wednesday, informing the community of their mission to monitor illegal mining operations there.
According to the assemblyman, the soldiers surprisingly set ablaze the excavators parked in the house amid protests by the community, who wondered why excavators at homes should be burnt.
He said after the house and the excavators got totally burnt, the soldiers proceeded to the mining site where they burnt four more of the excavators.
The incident enraged the residents who organised themselves to attack the soldiers, but the soldiers managed to flee the town.
The Ashanti Regional Police Command when contacted declined any comment on the matter.
Meanwhile, the case has been reported to the Nyinahin Police for further investigations.
According to the Assemblyman, the wife and eight-year-old child of Akwasi Gyamfi collapsed moments after their house was set on fire, and they were rushed to the Nyinahin Hospital for treatment.
The Ashanti Regional Secretary of the Ghana National Association of Small Scale Miners, Michael Adu Gyamfi, observed that much as they were not against monitoring of illegal gold mining, they never subscribed to the burning of excavators that could be used in the government’s community mining projects.
He viewed that if the soldiers had teamed up with the task force of the association, they could have devised a strategy that would have averted such happening as burning of one’s house.
Mr Adu Gyamfi said he did not understand why the soldiers could set one’s house on fire in the name of fighting illegal gold mining.
Tensionas at the time of filing this report had mounted in the community as enraged residents chased out the District Chief Executive who had wanted to pay a visit.
When contacted, Col Emmanuel Gyadu , Operations Officer of the Central Command of the Ghana Armed Forces (GAF), corroborated the story, having told the town folks about their operations and had gone ahead to set two of the excavators ablaze, they got agitated and started pelting stones at the military team.
“We would have replied to defend ourselves but on second thought, we were compelled not to respond since in our estimation if this had happened, the story would have been a different one,” he said.
“We had no other alternative than to retreat to save the situation, looking at the agitated stone throwing large crowd, which resulted in one of the stonessmashing a vehicle’s windscreen in the process.”
To a question as to why the military had to set a house on fire which had nothing to do with galamsey, Col Gyadu explained that the excavators were set ablaze near the house and it was later discovered that the place was initially a fuel depot, hence, making the house vulnerable to the fire.
At this point, to prevent the fire from engulfing the house, we had to call in the Ghana National Fire Service (GNFS) to contain the fire.
Col Gyadu said when the Fire fighters arrived on the scene, the agitated crowd in their numbers made every attempt to frustrate the firefighters to the extent that agitated stone pelting residents vandalised the fire tender.
Col Gyadu reiterated his team’s commitment to ensure that the “Operation Halt II” continued unabated in the fight against galamsey until sanity was restored in the system.
FROM KINGSLEY E.HOPE, KUMASI AND NORMAN COOPER IN ACCRA
