MP urges President to halt illegal mining in Akyem Abuakwa

Mr Atta Akyea, Member of Parliament (MP), for Abuakwa South, has appealed to President John Evans Atta Mills to honour his promise to use State Security to stop illegal mining in the Akyem Abuakwa area.

He said illegal mining, apart from degrading the environment, including polluting water bodies, had become a “killer” of the people and action needed to be taken now.

Mr Atta Akyea was speaking at a press conference at Kyebi, on Friday,  following the drowning of two brothers, Kofi Darkwa, 15, and Kingsley Efa Agyemang, 12, in an abandoned pit of some illegal miners at Kyebi recently.

He observed that the incident was not the first of its kind in the area and called for immediate action to stop the illegal miners but not wait till another disaster had occurred.

Mr. Atta Akyea said poverty and unemployment were not licenses for engaging in illegalities and prospective small-scale miners to acquire the necessary documents for their trade.

He called on the security authorities to be up and doing and to arrest anybody, even traditional authorities, found to be conniving and condoning illegal mining in the area.

Earlier, Mr Atta Akyea visited the family of the deceased to express his condolences to them and also took newsmen to visit the scene of the incident.

He expressed worry that though the illegal miner whose pit in which the children were drowned was well-known, nobody had been arrested in connection with the incident.

A few months ago, the National Security in collaboration with the Eastern Regional Security Council impounded 13 excavators of illegal miners in the Akyem Abuakwa Area but at the time of the press conference 10 of the excavators had been released to their owners and no one had been processed for court.

Source: GNA