Paa Kwasi Schandof, the Spokesperson for the Ministry of Lands and Natural Resources, has assured Ghanaians that persons arrested or implicated in illegal mining popularly known as galamsey will face the law.
According to Paa Kwasi Schandof, nobody arrested for galamsey will go scot-free.
He disclosed that prosecutions arising from illegal mining cases were currently in the custody of the Attorney General’s Office, adding that the office would provide further updates on the cases as the legal processes progressed.
Speaking to Citi News Digest on Saturday, September 26, Paa Kwasi Schandof stated, “All prosecutions are in the custody of the Attorney General, and I’m sure that in due course, the office of the AG would offer the relevant updates”.
“The assurance to the Ghanaian people is that nobody who has been caught, fingered, or arrested in illegal mining will go scot-free. The law will take its full course, irrespective of anybody who has been involved,” he added.
His assurance follows the arrest of 13 suspected illegal miners during an operation by the National Anti-Illegal Mining Operations Secretariat (NAIMOS) at Osino in the Fanteakwa South District on Friday, September 25, 2026.
In related news, President John Dramani Mahama has dismissed claims that he promised Ghanaians to declare a state of emergency to tackle illegal mining, popularly known as galamsey.
Speaking during a town hall meeting with the Ghanaian community in the Tri-State Area of the United States of America with Ghanaians in New York on Friday, September 25, President Mahama stressed that he never announced plans to invoke a state of emergency.
According to John Mahama, he said the use of a state of emergency should be a measure to be used only as a last resort.
Mahama claimed that the state of emergency is not useful at the moment because galamsey takes place across 10 regions of the country.
President Mahama stated, “They said I said a state of emergency. I never ever said that. I never said I’d declare a state of emergency, but states of emergency are useful; you declare them as a last resort.
If you declare a state of emergency, you normally declare it in an isolated area, and you deal with the issue. You concentrate all your energy there and deal with the issue. And you finish it, and you lift the state of emergency. They are very temporary”.
“Now, what people don’t understand is that galamsey is in 10 regions of Ghana. You declare a state of emergency; where are you going to declare the state of emergency?”
He further argued, “ That 48-hour rule doesn’t apply when there’s a state of emergency. And so the point is, we still have that power, but we must exercise it as a last resort”.
“We have forest reserves that have had incursions into them. And so what we’ve done is we’ve concentrated on the forest reserves.
“Nine of those forest reserves were considered red zones because of the degree of incursion into the forest reserves and the fact that those in those forest reserves were armed, and the forest guards could not go into the reserve for fear of their lives. Today, in those nine forest reserves, the army has cleared all the people out of them,” he added.
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