Galamsey: NAIMOS Nabs Chinese, 7 Ghanaians in Ashanti Region

A carefully coordinated anti-galamsey operation has resulted in the arrest of eight illegal miners — including a Chinese national — at an active mining site in the Ashanti Region, the National Anti-Illegal Mining Operations Secretariat (NAIMOS) has announced.

According to a statement posted on Facebook by journalist Erastus Asare Donkor, the NAIMOS task force swooped on a galamsey site at Oseikokrom in the Amansie West District on Thursday, 21 May 2026, in what the Secretariat described as an intelligence-led operation.

The Arrests

Upon sensing the approach of the task force, the suspects attempted to flee the site but were intercepted before they could escape. Eight individuals were arrested in total: one Chinese national and seven Ghanaian locals.

The arrested suspects were identified as:

1. Huang Weiye (Chinese National) — 38 years
2. Augustine Manu — 23 years
3. Kwame Ntoadro — 41 years
4. Moses Alou — 30 years
5. Alex Lenley — 32 years
6. Yaw Owusu — 26 years
7. Shaibu Wuni — 26 years
8. Patrick Bampoa — 22 years

Huang Weiye has since been conveyed to NAIMOS Headquarters for further investigations and subsequent handover to the Ghana Immigration Service, in line with standard procedure for foreign nationals implicated in illegal mining. The seven Ghanaian suspects were handed over to the Antoakrom Police Station for investigations and prosecution.

Equipment and Weapons Seized

The raid yielded a significant haul of equipment. Two Toyota Hilux pickups — registered GX 555-24 and CN 5168-26 — were seized at the site and transported to the NAIMOS logistics holding facility in Kumasi.

Operatives also found two excavators actively engaged in mining. One was seized and conveyed to the Kumasi holding area. The second, immobile due to an attached tracker that could not be deactivated, was immobilised on-site by task force personnel who detached its monitor and control board.

Additionally, a pump-action gun was recovered from the site — a detail that underscores the security risks routinely faced by anti-galamsey operatives in the field.

Task force personnel also set ablaze several makeshift structures that had served as hideouts for the illegal miners.

NAIMOS Signals Escalation of Operations

Speaking on the outcome of the raid, Colonel Dominic Buah, Director of Operations for NAIMOS, signalled that the Secretariat’s enforcement posture would not relent.

“The task forces would continue to intensify such surgical raids in all galamsey hotspots across the country,” he stated.

Colonel Buah further noted that the intensified operations and broader strategies being deployed by NAIMOS were yielding measurable results in disrupting entrenched illegal mining networks — networks he described as responsible for the destruction of cocoa farms, forest reserves, and road networks, as well as the severe pollution of the nation’s water bodies.

The Oseikokrom bust represents another data point in what NAIMOS is framing as a sustained, intelligence-driven campaign — one that is increasingly targeting the organised, often foreign-backed networks that underpin Ghana’s galamsey problem, rather than merely apprehending low-level site workers.

 

 

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