By Ishmael Kindama Dumbuya at the periphery of the Pampana
The high rate at which dredge mining on our rivers and river beds across the country is being carried out mostly pioneered by foreign nationals, especially Ghanaians and Liberians is very alarming. If robust actions are not taken now, this will lead to a devastating effect in a few years if not now for the present and generations yet unborn. As welcoming as it is, there is an Agency that has decided to take the bull by its horn despite confrontations by a cross-section of community people/traditional leaders and a few other members of the public. But this is not something that the dedicated leadership of the Environment Protection Agency of Sierra Leone (EPASL) is ever ready to pay credence to.
As this menace continues, the Executive Chairman of the EPA-SL, Dr. Bondi Gevao through the approval of the Board and Management of the Agency has procured two high-speed Jetskies to surf within the waters and chase out these illegal dredge miners within our waterways.
Before now, when the team of EPA officials from the Field Operations and Extension visits these dredge miners on their various sites, they could easily maneuver their ways and move away to other points deeper in the rivers where the team could not easily penetrate. Sometimes they can shame on the team and continue their illegal and odd activities. But with the presence of these Jetskies, this is now a thing of the past.
Just after the procurement of the Jetskies, the Agency hired the services of technical personnel to train a dedicated special team at the Agency to conduct raids on our waterways. Like the US Special Forces and Navy SEALS, this dedicated team of the Agency can swim, dive, surf, and handle all difficult terrains relative to the destruction/burning of dredges that could be spotted within our riverways.
To test the fronts within a duration of three weeks starting from the 7th-26th of August 2023, the Special Team of the EPASL is telling these illegal dredge miners that the days of reckoning are here. The operation in close collaboration with the Republic of Sierra Leone police started in Boajibu in the Sewa River in the Kenema District and slightly stretched to Sumbuya Town in the Bo District where a significant number of dredges were destroyed/burnt down. Based on a June 2021 Presidential Directive and order to curb all illegal dredge mining activities on our waterways, the main objective of this special operation is to destroy all dredges and if possible arrest any foreign national we could lay hands on or set eyes upon.
From the Sewa, Tia, and Jong Rivers in the South, the team heads to the North in the tributaries of the Pampana River where the team successfully destroyed twenty dredges in one location and was intensively conducting dredge mining. In this location, immediately the dredge miners saw our team, they activated their dredges and started running away from the team. But with the help of the Jetskies, they were overpowered within all the locations they landed and hid their dredges. Whilst we still have more locations to visit and crack down on all dredge mining activities, as of today Thursday 17th August 2023, the team has successfully established eighty (80) dredges so far in the East, South, and Northern provinces.
In most of the operations to the dredge mining sites, after the miners flew away, the team discovers traces of items belonging to foreign nationals. For instance, in Tonkolili, we discovered abandoned Ghanaian passports as well as Sierra Leone Immigration clearances to stay in the country and Sierra Leone labor cards. Aside from all these, we discovered hard drugs such as tramadol, and sexual inducement pills like Viagra and Sildenafil presumably showing indications that immoralities are taking place in nearby communities. The antibiotic drugs we saw like Rifapicillin are likely an indication that these foreign nationals are spreading sicknesses in these communities.
There is a major challenge during this operation and that is the connivance of community people and landowning families with the foreign nationals who brought this type of mining in this country. The moment they saw us, in the towns, some would ride their motorbikes to the locations and inform them of our arrival. Some would also use their mobile phones to communicate with them. For instance, in Yele in the Gbonnkolenken Chiefdom, we could have captured most Ghanaians but ran away after being tipped off.
Dredge mining is the act of removing silt and other material from the bottom of bodies of water using suction dredges with a nozzle deep down the waterways. A placer deposit is also used in a natural watercourse or an ancient river channel. During this process, dredge mining will damage the ecology by directly affecting its physical habitat, disrupting riverine processes, and reducing the connectivity with the floodplain. Among the other many effects of dredge mining in our communities is that it also contaminates our water sources thereby causing huge problems for communities that depend on these rivers downstream.
Dredge mining is very dangerous and is a type of mining which the Environment Protection Agency had never and will never issue any Environment Impact Assessment license for in Sierra Leone as has always been demonstrated by the Executive Chairman, Dr. Bondi Gevao.
Our operations these weeks have received commendation from many environment-loving people and on our social media platforms with requests to add more efforts in curbing dredge mining from our waterways. The Chief Minister, Dr. David Moinina Sengeh had already appreciated the efforts of the EPA and its leadership in ensuring that our environment is protected from all man-made disturbances.
“This operation is not going to stop. As long as the dredge miners do not stop, we are not going to stop our operations, said Dr. Gevao.
