Children on the frontlines of galamsey: NAIMOS sounds alarm over minors in illegal mining
Anti-galamsey body refers cases to social welfare authorities as enforcement operations uncover disturbing child involvement trend
Ghana’s National Anti-Illegal Mining Operations Secretariat has uncovered one of the most troubling dimensions of the country’s galamsey crisis yet, the active involvement of children in illegal mining activities, a development that senior officials say is not an isolated occurrence but an emerging trend that demands immediate and coordinated intervention.
Colonel Dominic Buah, Director of Operations at NAIMOS, made the disclosure at the secretariat’s Editors Forum and Quarterly Press Briefing on March 25, describing the presence of minors in illegal mining sites as a matter of serious and urgent concern for the organisation and the country at large.
“We have observed the issue of children in the space. They are minors, and that is a major concern for us,” Col. Buah stated.
The revelation adds a sobering human dimension to what has largely been framed as an environmental and economic crisis. The discovery of children actively engaged in galamsey operations means that the illegal mining problem now intersects directly with child welfare, child labour, and the broader mandate of Ghana’s social protection institutions.
Recognizing that the situation falls outside the operational boundaries of an anti-mining unit, NAIMOS has referred the identified cases to the appropriate institutions, specifically the Ministry of Gender and Social Protection and the Department of Social Welfare, to ensure that the affected children receive the care and intervention they need.
“We have engaged the appropriate authorities through the ministry and social welfare to determine how best they can handle the situation. We have their details and where they were picked up from,” Col. Buah explained.
Particularly alarming in Col. Buah’s remarks was his characterisation of the child involvement cases not as individual anomalies, but as indicators of a wider pattern that likely extends well beyond the cases NAIMOS has been able to document so far.
“This is a trend. These are not the only ones; we are dealing with just those we were able to apprehend,” he stressed.
The implication is significant. If the children identified by NAIMOS represent only a fraction of those actually caught up in illegal mining activities across the country, the true scale of the problem may be considerably larger, and considerably more urgent, than current figures suggest.
Beyond the child protection concerns, Col. Buah also provided an update on the broader enforcement picture, revealing that NAIMOS has made arrests of high-profile illegal mining operators and is actively pursuing further action against them.
“Some of the high-profile galamsey operators we have arrested, we have details of them and are pursuing the necessary processes,” he said.
He was clear about the core focus of NAIMOS’ operational mandate, physically removing illegal miners from the sites where they operate, with particular attention to water bodies, forest reserves, and major road corridors that have been heavily impacted by galamsey activity.
“Our mandate is operational. We keep clearing them from the water bodies, forest reserves, and along the roads. That is our primary focus,” he noted.
Col. Buah also outlined the procedural framework that NAIMOS applies when individuals are apprehended during operations, a framework that distinguishes between foreign nationals and Ghanaian citizens.
Foreign nationals arrested in connection with illegal mining are handed over to the Ghana Immigration Service for processing, while Ghanaian citizens are transferred to the Ghana Police Service and the Attorney General’s Department for prosecution through the formal legal system.
“When we make arrests, if you are a foreigner, we hand you over to immigration. If you are a local, you are handed over to the police and the Attorney General for prosecution,” Col. Buah explained.
Despite the complexity and scale of the challenges NAIMOS continues to face, Col. Buah reaffirmed the secretariat’s unwavering commitment to sustaining its operations, not just in terms of enforcement, but in the longer-term goal of restoring the degraded lands and water bodies that have borne the environmental cost of years of unchecked illegal mining.
The disclosure of children in galamsey sites, however, has added a new and deeply uncomfortable layer to that mission, one that goes beyond clearing riverbanks and forest corridors, and into the urgent territory of protecting Ghana’s most vulnerable citizens from exploitation in one of the country’s most dangerous and destructive illegal industries.
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