It was the hope of Evans Dogbe, 25, and Kate Agboga, 23, that their two-year-old twins would grow up to become responsible adults. Having also lost their first child, the young couple saw the birth of Frederick and Leticia as compensation for their previous loss. 

Their plan was to enrol the pair in school and give them the best education that would make them national assets.

However, this dream was crushed when the toddlers fell into an illegal mining pit on Monday, August 26, 2024, never to live again.

The sad incident, which occurred at Morkwa in the Twifo-Atti Mokwa District in the Central Region, has left the couple shattered.

When Graphic Online visited the couple at their home in the farming community on September 4, the mood was that of dejection, despair and sobriety.

Sitting in the courtyard of two mud houses roofed with corrugated iron sheet were family members who had gathered for a meeting. The solemn environment spoke volumes about how devastated the family was.

When the Graphic Online sat with the couple for an interview, they recounted events of the day, amid intermittent dead silence.
Mr Dogbe, a farmer, explained that he heard the news about the death of his twins at about 12:30 p.m. 

“My wife took the two children to visit their grandmother at a nearby settlement called Red Village. While there, she fell asleep and when she woke up, she could not find the kids. 

“She started looking for them and when she got to the uncovered mining pit, she found their lifeless bodies in the pit which contained water,” he explained in Twi.

Explaining further, Mr Dogbe said: “When I heard the news about the death of my kids, I was so devastated that my phone fell from my hand. I was shivering; I could not control myself. It was as if the world was crushing on me.”

For Kate Agboga, it was disheartening that she lost her two children in such a bizarre circumstance.  

“My first born died before I gave birth to those two and now they are gone. I do not know how I will start all over again,” she said, wiping tears from her eyes.

The 23-year-old said although she would live permanently with the scars of the loss of her twins, what would assuage her bitterness was for proactive measures that would protect other children from such a disaster.  

“Galamsey is a real killer. Some schoolchildren do not even stay in school because of galamsey. I know that it will be so difficult to stop it here; but what I can say and hope for is that they should try and fill the pits after mining so that such deaths will be averted,” she said.

The killer pits

When Graphic Online was led to the mining site that claimed the two tender lives, it was observed that the gaping pit was half filled with water while several other pits were dotted around.

The pit was less than 40 metres away from the house in which Ms Agboga had taken the victims to visit their grandmother.

The pit has a steep but sloping entry that could easily make one slip into its deeper part which contained water. This gave indication that the children might have slipped while playing around it.

Renewed actions

Following heightened anxiety over escalating galamsey activities across the country, the Minister of Lands and Natural Resources, Samuel Abu Jinapor, has assured Ghanaians that the government would take immediate action to tackle the menace. 

Mr Jinapor said the government had not gone to sleep over illegal mining in the country as was being suggested by some people and groups. 

In an interview with Joy FM on September 4, the minister stressed that the security forces would deploy as soon as possible to areas affected by the canker "to deal ruthlessly with the recalcitrant illegal miners."

Mr Jinapor said he was optimistic the new approach to fighting the galamsey menace would culminate in "a total remediation of the situation and restore the country’s water and forest Resources." 

“We are going to have the review and I am certain that we are going to deploy the security agencies. We are going to ramp up our enforcement measures to clean up all affected areas," he stressed. 

Local authorities

For his part, the Assembly Member for Morkwa Electoral Area, George Frimpong Sem, described the death of the twins in the galamsey pit as bizarre and unacceptable.

He told Graphic Online that it was worrying that although there had been a commitment by the government to stop illegal mining activities, the illegality was rife in the area and posing threats to both the environment and human lives.

“The illegal miners are destroying lands, rivers, forests and killing people. They leave pits open after mining. If the pits were covered after mining, these toddlers would not have met their untimely death,” he said.

When asked what would be done about the situation to forestall the occurrence of such deaths, he said he was currently handicapped because the Twifo-Atti Morkwa District Assembly was not fully functional for such issues to be tackled.

“Currently, the assembly does not have a Presiding Member to convene meetings, so we do not attend meetings. It is when we attend assembly meetings that I can put the issue before the assembly for prompt action. We tried to elect a Presiding Member but there has been three failed attempts because they could not meet the two-thirds requirement,” he said.

Mr Frimpong called on the government to take immediate steps to end the galamsey menace while efforts were made to reclaim all degraded lands and uncovered pits. 

Tough battle

When the Graphic Online contacted the Twifo Atti-Mokwa District Director of NADMO, Richmond Addae Marfo, on what was being done to avert disasters associated with illegal mining, he said although the galamsey situation in the district was “alarming and disheartening” very little could be done about it because of lack of capacity by local authorities and other factors. 

Mr Marfo said the uncovered pits left behind by illegal miners were death traps that had killed many people in mining communities, caused diseases because of the breeding of mosquitoes and exacerbated flooding incidents.

He observed that the best approach to adopt to restore the vegetation was to first halt the activities of illegal miners to make land reclamation efforts effective. 

“The District Security Committee (DISEC) has been trying its best to fight galamsey in the Pra River but the challenge is huge because we do not have speed boats. If we actually want to stop galamsey, there must be commitment from three people – chiefs, politicians and citizens,” he said. 

Wider picture

The death of Frederick and Leticia in a galamsey pit at Morkwa is just a tip of the iceberg as many lives have already been lost to the pits.

In September, 2022, Yaa Kyerewa, a 48-year-old resident of Nkatieso in the Bibiani-Anwhiaso-Bekwai Municipality in the Western North Region, lost her son, Paa Kwasi, because of an illegal mining pit.

Paa Kwasi who had finished Senior High School (SHS) fell into an uncovered illegal mining pit and died.

On March 28, 2022, the Ashanti Regional Director of NADMO, Nana Atakora Kodua, also disclosed to the media that more than 20 people lost their lives after falling into galamsey pits between 2019 and 2021.

Reclamation

The Mineral and Mining Regulations, 2012 (L.I. 2182) and the Environmental Assessment Regulations, 1999 (L.I. 1652), require small-scale mining (SSM) companies to ensure that all areas degraded by their operations are reclaimed.

According to the California Department of Conservation, reclamation involves the combined process by which adverse environmental effects of surface mining are minimised and mined lands are returned to a beneficial end use.

Regulation 23 of L.I 1652 requires the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to make sure that prospective small-scale miners post reclamation bonds in the form of cash into an escrow account based on approved reclamation plans.

Regulations 472 (2c) of the Minerals and Mining (Health, Safety and Technical) Regulations, 2012 (L.I. 2182) also requires the Inspectorate Division of the Minerals Commission to ensure that prospective small-scale miners submit an operating plan, together with other requirements, for acquisition of SSM operating permit. The plan explains how the miners intend to rehabilitate the mined areas by detailing the methods and procedures for revegetation.

Despite the existence of these regulations, a performance audit report of the Auditor-General on regulating reclamation activities at small-scale mining sites, presented to Parliament on June 20, 2021, revealed that 22 years after the passage of L.I 1652, none of the small-scale mining companies operating in the country had complied with the requirement to post reclamation bonds.

The report found that although some of the companies the EPA issued with environmental permits had submitted reclamation plans, the authority failed to ensure that they posted reclamation bonds.

Recalcitrant illegal miners

While licensed SSM are flouting the law on reclamation, illegal miners have aggravated the situation as they destroy swathes of land with impunity.

One such illegal miners is 53-year-old Seth Notson, who the Daily Graphic encountered at Morkwa last Wednesday. 

He said he would not stop the illegal small-scale mining unless he found a job that could pay him more than the GH¢20,000 he earned from galamsey every two weeks.