The President of the Small-Scale Miners Association, Michael Kwadwo Peprah, has alleged that small-scale illegal mining (‘galamsey’) ‘queen’, Aisha Huang, came back to Ghana six months after she was deported.
In a Neat FM interview monitored by GhanaWeb, Peprah said that the ‘galamsey’ ‘queen’ was in Ghana but ran to neighbouring countries anytime she heard she was about to be arrested.
He added that Aisha Huang is not the only Chinese deportee who has returned to Ghana, as most of the Chinese nationals who were deported by a committee set up by the government to fight ‘galamsey’ have returned to the country to continue their businesses.
“We were aware Aisha Huang was in Ghana long ago. Aisha Huang came to Ghana six months after she was deported. The inter-ministerial committee against illegal mining which was headed by Charles Bissue arrested a lot of Chinese and deported them but almost all of them came back with some of them coming back just after two weeks.
“As we are speaking most of them are still in Ghana seriously engaging in ‘galamsey’. When Aisha came, because there was a lot of attention on her, she was mostly in Côte d'Ivoire as she was plying her ‘galamsey’ trade in Ghana. Anytime she gets wind of attempts to arrest her, she runs to Côte d'Ivoire.
“So, as for us, we knew she was in the country. She has a company that sells ‘galamsey’ equipment in Kumasi. She also went to Mali and the Ghanaians she was working with were telling us, she was with them,” he said in Twi.
Also, he said that landlord of the 'galamsey' queen blew her cover to the police in Accra which means that she was not traced by the Ghana Immigration Service as asserted.
Kwadwo Peprah explained that the landlord reported her because she had threatened to harm him after finding out the apartment she used to occupy before her deportation, had been rented out on her return.
Meanwhile, the Ghana Immigration Service has denied that Huang had been in the country for more than three months as reported by some media outlets.
According to the Director of public relations of the GIS, Supt Amoako-Atta, the ‘galamsey’ queen was picked up after some intelligence operation by its outfit even though she managed to enter the country without being detected.
“The information I have from our officers is not the three months that you are talking about. By mid-August and second September, she was intercepted by our officers… when it comes to the borders, we have not hidden the fact that our borders are porous, especially in the sub-region and it is not peculiar to the West Africa sub-region alone but across the world,” he added.
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Aisha Huang after her appearance in court