The police have arrested three illegal Chinese miners, including a female and two Ghanaians, in the Atiwa West Municipality in the Eastern Region.
The illegal miners were arrested over the weekend whilst mining with excavators, destroying the vegetation and polluting the Birim river.
Their mining equipment was confiscated.
The accused have been arraigned before the Koforidua Circuit Court and remanded.
Illegal mining in the Eastern
Recent statistics from the Attorney General’s Department detailed that a total of 187 people charged in 48 cases of illegal mining have been convicted and sentenced to various terms of imprisonment in the Eastern Region since 2017,
Giving the breakdown to the media, the Attorney General, Godfred Yeboah Dame, noted that all the cases were conducted by the Eastern Region branch of the Office of the Attorney General, led by a chief state attorney, Emily Addo-Okyireh.
Following a directive from the Chief Justice designating High Court 3 and Circuit Court B in Koforidua as courts to deal with illegal mining cases, the Office of the Attorney General prosecuted all cases of galamsey brought to its attention.
Most of the cases were tried at Circuit Court B, Koforidua, presided over by Her Honour Mercy Adei-Kotey (as she then was), now a high court justice.
The 187 convicted persons include 29 nationals of Niger, seven Nigerians and three Chinese.
Most accused persons were tried and sentenced under the old section 99 of the Minerals and Mining Act, 2006 (Act 703). Section 99(1) of Act 703 prescribed a penalty of a minimum fine of three thousand penalty units or imprisonment for a term of not more than five years for the offence of buying or selling minerals without a licence.
For the offence of undertaking a small-scale mining operation without a licence or acting in contravention of a provision of Act 703 in respect of which an offence is created, section 99(2) of Act 703 stipulated a penalty of a minimum fine of one thousand penalty units or to imprisonment for a term not more than three years.
Despite the provision not being punitive enough, the Office of the Attorney-General says it succeeded in ensuring the application of maximum or near-maximum custodial sentences allowed under imposed on the accused persons in 40 of the cases, with the court exercising the discretion to impose a fine the rest of the cases.