Galamsey pit crashes five to death in Western Region

Five miners met their untimely death last Sunday after an illegal mining (galamsey) pit collapsed on them at Adumbanso Lower Electoral Area, a farming community in the Wassa East District of the Western Region.

The five, consisting of four females and one male whose names have been given as Samuel Abekah alias Kofi Tawiah aged 18 years with the four females yet to be identified.

Report by the Assemblyman for the Adumbanso Lower Electoral Area, Mr Albert Kwasi Kwakye, the five met their untimely death when the dugout sand caved on them while they were prospecting for gold.

Mr Kwakye said, he alerted the Police immediately who went to the scene and found the five dead bodies, retrieved and deposited the bodies at a private mortuary at Funko pending investigations.

The Wassa East District is one of the notable areas for illegal mining business in the Western Region.

In an interview with the Ghana News Agency, Mr Samuel Abeka, father of Master Kwasi Abekah indicated that his son is a JHS 2 student at the Apewosika Basic School near the University of Cape Coast (UCC) in the Central Region.

He lamented that his son was with him in Cape Coast, however, but had to go and live with the mother in Adumbanso due to the closure of schools as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic.

When asked about the living conditions of the family, he explained that he is a worker at the UCC who placed premium on education and that the son and the mother who worked in an oil palm plantation were not in hardship conditions, which would push the boy into “galamsey”.

“Even though we are divorced, I take good care of my children and wasn’t aware that my son was into “galamsey” and the mother never told me, so I was surprised when the news about his death in a “galamsey” pit was broken to me”, Mr Abekah stressed.

He appealed to the Police to conduct a thorough investigation into the incident.

Source: GNA