The National Anti-Illegal Mining Operations Secretariat (NAIMOS) has signalled a major expansion of its enforcement strategy against illegal mining, with increased attention now being directed at persons and businesses that manufacture, fabricate, transport, store, supply or otherwise facilitate access to equipment used for illegal mining. The new approach became evident during a major NAIMOS operation at Eshaem in the Nzema East Municipality of the Western Region, where enforcement personnel disrupted several illegal mining sites stretching from the Eshaem road towards the Ankobra River.
During the operation, the Task Force destroyed 28 chanfang machines, 19 water pumps, and five makeshift structures used to support illegal mining. Several illegal mining locations were identified along the operational corridor, including two major sites near the Ankobra River. Evidence of recent excavator activity was observed at one site, while three excavators were found at another. A monitor was recovered from one machine, while critical components had already been removed from the others.
The operation took a significant turn during the Task Force’s return from the area, when personnel encountered a Hyundai truck carrying 22 brand-new chanfang machines being offloaded into a store. The truck and the 22 machines were immediately seized. An adjoining store was also found to contain a substantial quantity of equipment and spare parts associated with illegal mining operations. The premises were subsequently secured to enable further investigations into the source, ownership and intended destination of the equipment. This development represents an important evolution in NAIMOS’ enforcement strategy.
NAIMOS has observed that destroying chanfang machines, pumps, and other equipment at illegal mining sites alone will not provide a lasting solution if operators can replace the machinery within days and return to the rivers. The Secretariat is therefore extending enforcement beyond the mining sites to the supply and logistics networks that enable illegal mining. Under this approach, increased attention will be directed at chanfang fabricators, equipment manufacturers and assemblers, dealers and suppliers, transporters, warehouses and stores, as well as persons who knowingly rent excavators, pumps, and other machinery for illegal mining operations.
NAIMOS will also intensify intelligence-gathering to identify where illegal mining equipment is fabricated, assembled, stored and distributed. The objective is to deny illegal miners the ability to rapidly replace equipment destroyed during enforcement operations, thereby weakening the logistical system that sustains repeated illegal mining along Ghana’s rivers, farms and other environmentally sensitive areas.
The Eshaem operation is part of Operation WATER SHIELD, which aims to protect the Ankobra River, which remains under pressure from illegal mining in parts of the Western Region. NAIMOS will sustain operations along the river corridor while targeting the networks that supply the machinery, fuel, transport and other logistics required for illegal mining.
The Secretariat serves notice that persons who knowingly manufacture, fabricate, transport, store, supply, or rent equipment for illegal mining should no longer consider themselves removed from enforcement merely because they are not physically operating at a mining site. The fight against illegal mining will no longer end at the riverbank. It will extend to the workshops where illegal mining equipment is fabricated, the stores where it is kept, the vehicles used to transport it and the networks that finance and supply it.
NAIMOS will continue to work with relevant security and regulatory institutions to investigate the ownership and supply chains of equipment intercepted during operations and take appropriate action where links to illegal mining are established. The message is clear: those who provide the machines and infrastructure that enable the destruction of Ghana’s rivers are part of the problem, and the enforcement net is widening to reach them.
