The District Chief Executive(DCE) of Ellembelle, Mr. Kwasi Bonzo, has been arrested with three others for obstructing police operations at Axim Junction.
In a statement released by the police on Wednesday, 7 September 2022, the DCE and the other suspects were detained in the Western Region on Tuesday, 6 September 2022.
According to the statement, the police retrieved one of some excavators that were reported missing in the Ellembelle district after days of intelligence operations.
“A team of operations and intelligence officers working day and night discovered the missing excavator several kilometres into a forest within the Ellembelle District.”
“While the team of police officers was escorting the excavator to Takoradi, at the Axim Junction, the DCE of Ellembelle, Mr. Kwasi Bonzo, organised and led some thugs to attack the police and obstruct the operation. The DCE and three others were therefore arrested accordingly,” the police added in the statement.
This comes barely a week after Mr. Kwasi Bonzo accused the Esiama Divisional Police Command of not being committed to the fight against illegal mining, also known as galamsey, in the district.
He expressed his frustration after two excavators he and some members of the District Security Council (DISEC) had seized from some illegal miners went missing from the custody of the police.
Narrating the issue in an interview, the DCE said that he received a distress call from the headmaster of the Nkroful Senior High School on Tuesday, 30 August 2022, about the galamsey activities taking place on a section of the school land.
Mr. Bonzo said a member of the District’s Small Scale Mining Committee also reported that two brand new excavators were at that illegal mining site.
“The committee later seized the excavators after they were tracked to a nearby town, Teleku Bokazu. I quickly called the area’s Divisional Police Commander to inform him about it. To my surprise, the Divisional Police Commander told me that the police did not have enough men in the area to guard the excavators”.
He said the commander later agreed to release two men but said the two personnel could only protect the machines up to 6 pm that day.
The DCE told journalists that for more than 18 minutes, he tried to convince the Divisional Commander on the phone of the need to give maximum protection to the equipment, but the commander insisted his men could guard up to 6 pm.
Kwasi Bonzoh said true to the commander’s words, the two policemen left the machines at 6 pm when the assembly had still not been able to secure a payloader to convey the machines.
“We could also not get mechanics to immobilise the machines, and when we went there on Wednesday morning, the two excavators were nowhere to be found,” the DCE lamented.
Meanwhile, the Western Regional Police Command said the police did not take custody of any excavators as alleged by the DCE and that the investigation is still underway to recover the other excavator and arrest all those behind it to face justice.