NAIMOS STORMS NKAWIE FOREST RESERVE, DESTROYS CHANGFANGS AND DISABLES FOUR CONCEALED EXCAVATORS

Nkawie, Atwima Mponua District | Friday, 1 May 2026

The National Anti-Illegal Mining Operations Secretariat (NAIMOS) has executed a decisive sanitisation operation within the Nkawie Forest Reserve in the Atwima Mponua District of the Ashanti Region, dismantling an active illegal mining enclave situated along the banks of the Offin River and immobilising four (4) excavators that had been deliberately concealed in surrounding thickets by fleeing galamsey operators.

The operation, conducted at midday on Friday, 1 May 2026, followed actionable intelligence indicating sustained illegal mining activity within the reserve. NAIMOS field taskforce personnel deployed to the area with a twofold objective of assessing the extent of environmental damage occasioned by the unlawful operations and ridding the forest reserve of the entrenched activities of illegal miners.

Preliminary observations on arrival confirmed that the operations of the miners were concentrated along the Offin River, a vital tributary whose ecological integrity has been severely compromised by the pollution and physical destruction associated with the galamsey enterprise.

The arrival of the taskforce triggered an immediate dispersal of the miners, who abandoned their active mining sites and fled into the surrounding bush in fear of arrest. Their hurried retreat compelled them to leave behind a substantial cache of equipment, which was promptly secured by operatives. A thorough search of the abandoned sites yielded one (1) pump action gun together with five (5) live cartridges, alongside eight (8) water pumping machines deployed for the extraction and processing of mineralised material from the riverbed.

In a comprehensive sweep aimed at neutralising the entire mining infrastructure, the taskforce severed and incinerated all water hoses connecting the mining pits to the pumping machines. Three (3) wooden gold washing platforms were equally set ablaze, while five (5) changfan machines, the floating dredging contraptions notorious for the systematic devastation of Ghanaian water bodies, were destroyed through burning.

The deliberate destruction of these assets was undertaken to impose a meaningful financial cost on the operators and to disrupt any prospect of swift resumption of activity at the site.

The most consequential discovery of the day, however, emerged from a follow up reconnaissance of the broader site, where operatives identified fresh excavator tracks branching off in multiple directions and disappearing into dense thickets. The trails led to four (4) excavators that had been deliberately concealed by the operators in an apparent bid to evade exposure and recovery. A technical assessment of the machines revealed that the monitors of the earth moving equipment had already been detached by the suspected galamsey operators, evidently as a self preservation measure. To definitively render the excavators inoperable, the in house excavator operator attached to the NAIMOS team proceeded to remove additional critical components from the machines, including three (3) control boards and four (4) oil pumps, which were retrieved and taken into custody.

The Nkawie Forest Reserve operation forms part of an unrelenting nationwide enforcement posture by the Secretariat, with deliberate emphasis on the protection of the country's waterways, the preservation of gazetted forest reserves, and the disruption of the illicit chemical inputs that sustain the galamsey trade.

NAIMOS wishes to reaffirm that the forest reserves of Ghana are not sanctuaries for environmental criminality, and that operatives of the Secretariat will continue to pursue offenders into every concealed thicket and every guarded enclave until the integrity of the nation's natural patrimony is fully restored.