Ghanaian authorities confiscated 3,000 illegal mining machines to address the destruction of the country's waterways and farmland by untracked equipment, News Ghana reported.
The country's vehicle licensing agency executed the seizure after learning that the mining operators intentionally skipped equipment registration to escape detection. Officials say the crackdown closes an important loophole that previously allowed environmental harm to continue unchecked.
The enforcement exposed equipment owners' complex evasion tactics. In an interview with ChannelOne TV, Julius Neequaye Kotey, CEO of Ghana's Driver and Vehicle Licensing Authority, described one incident wherein operators removed tracking devices from excavators.
"They took the tracker off and they gave it to an Uber car," he said, explaining that the tracking device showed movement to one location while the excavator went elsewhere undetected.
The new port registration requirement has already brought more than 5,000 excavators under government tracking, according to ChannelOne. Before this initiative, investigations showed that machines seized during previous anti-mining operations lacked proper documentation, which made it impossible to trace equipment back to specific operators when environmental violations occurred.
Authorities are keeping the impounded excavators at VALCO's Tema location, where "they're packing them there," according to Kotey.
For communities near mining zones, the use of unregistered excavators contaminates drinking water and destroys farmland. The DVLA's new registration mandate gives authorities a way to identify and prosecute violators when their machines damage ecosystems. This accountability could protect water sources for millions of people and preserve farmland that sustains local economies and feeds Ghanaians across the nation.
The DVLA's enforcement reflects a growing recognition that equipment tracking is vital to environmental protection. When mining machines operate without oversight, the damage often goes unaddressed until rivers run polluted and forests vanish.
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