Rescue officers on site
An unspecified number of small scale miners are still trapped in flooded pits in the Gbane mining community in the Talensi District in the Upper East Region 24 hours after the incident.
The miners had entered the pits in search of gold after a downpour on Monday, May 31 at about 11:00pm, but luck ran out on them when large volumes of water entered some pits and spread to adjourning ones, and trapping them.
Community members are surprised at the incident, especially when the miners have always entered the pits after downpours for gold and nothing happened. They suspect that an ongoing road construction may have caused the diversion of the water from its natural course.
Other residents said the flooding was caused by the overflow of a nearby river which they had no control over.
As at 8:00am on Wednesday, June 2, efforts by rescue teams from the National Disaster Management Organisation (NADMO), Ghana National Fire Service and community members had not yielded any positive result; the trapped miners have not been rescued, dead or alive due to the high volumes of water inside the affected pits.
All mining activities in the area have halted as various small scale mining groups have volunteered their water pumping machines and other rescue equipment to support in the ongoing effort to rescue the miners.
If the volume of water pumped out of the pits and number of pumps deployed for this purpose is anything to go by, some miners could be rescued today.
The Upper East Regional Chairman of the Small Scale Miners Association, Robert Boazo, said the association is sad over what has happened and urged family members to be calm while the trapped miners are rescued.
FROM: Ebo Bruce-Quansah, Gbane