An officer of the Forestry Commission (FC) of Ghana is battling for his life after gun attacks from illegal miners left some bullets lodged in parts of his body, including his brain, a release has said.
John Baba Konlan, the official, was part of a nine-member team drawn from the Rapid Response Unit and the Forest Guards Unit of the FC sent to verify information about illegal mining operations in a forest reserve near the Morrison Community in the Western region.
According to the release, the team abandoned their official truck at a point in the forest reserve and walked for more than an hour to the location of the alleged illegal mining activities, and upon sighting the illegal miners, the team decided to encircle them quietly to arrest them, but came under gun fire in the process.
“Later, the team members heard one of their colleagues screaming and calling out to the rest to come and assist Konlan, because he had been shot,
“The team, therefore, called off the entire exercise, carried Konlan, who was vomiting blood at the time, walking for more than an hour to their vehicle with their wounded colleague,” said the release.
The FC said the victim had received treatment at the Effia Nkwanta Government Hospital in the Western Region, Central Regional Hospital in Came Coast, and finally at the University f Ghana Medical Centre.
It added that CT Scan images showed a bullet lodged in the left side of the victims brain, while other bullets were lodged in other parts of the body.
“There are other bullets that did not enter the brain or fractured any bone; Two are left in the left frontal scalp, one in the left parietal at the vertex, multiple lodged close to the angle of the left mandible and one in the soft tissue of the right neck,” said the release.
It added that a complaint had been lodged with the police in Takoradi in the Western Region, but no arrests made so far.
In a similar situation, illegal chain-saw operators had abducted Vitus Yourdong, another FC Rapid Response Team member, in the Asukese Forest Reserve in the Bono Region between June and July. He was detained by his abductors for two weeks and later abandoned at a refuse dump in the Eastern Region.
Ghana is yet to find a workable solution to the menace of illegal mining which continues to pollute water bodies and destroy farms and farmlands in the country.