The National Anti-Illegal Mining Operations Secretariat (NAIMOS) has signalled a major expansion of its enforcement strategy against illegal mining, with increased attention now being directed at persons and businesses that manufacture, fabricate, transport, store, supply or otherwise facilitate access to equipment used for illegal mining. The new approach became evident during a major NAIMOS operation at Eshaem in the Nzema East Municipality of the Western Region, where enforcement personnel disrupted several illegal mining sites stretching from the Eshaem road towards the Ankobra River.
During the operation, the Task Force destroyed 28 chanfang machines, 19 water pumps, and five makeshift structures used to support illegal mining. Several illegal mining locations were identified along the operational corridor, including two major sites near the Ankobra River. Evidence of recent excavator activity was observed at one site, while three excavators were found at another. A monitor was recovered from one machine, while critical components had already been removed from the others.
The operation took a significant turn during the Task Force’s return from the area, when personnel encountered a Hyundai truck carrying 22 brand-new chanfang machines being offloaded into a store. The truck and the 22 machines were immediately seized. An adjoining store was also found to contain a substantial quantity of equipment and spare parts associated with illegal mining operations. The premises were subsequently secured to enable further investigations into the source, ownership and intended destination of the equipment. This development represents an important evolution in NAIMOS’ enforcement strategy.
NAIMOS has observed that destroying chanfang machines, pumps, and other equipment at illegal mining sites alone will not provide a lasting solution if operators can replace the machinery within days and return to the rivers. The Secretariat is therefore extending enforcement beyond the mining sites to the supply and logistics networks that enable illegal mining. Under this approach, increased attention will be directed at chanfang fabricators, equipment manufacturers and assemblers, dealers and suppliers, transporters, warehouses and stores, as well as persons who knowingly rent excavators, pumps, and other machinery for illegal mining operations.
NAIMOS will also intensify intelligence-gathering to identify where illegal mining equipment is fabricated, assembled, stored and distributed. The objective is to deny illegal miners the ability to rapidly replace equipment destroyed during enforcement operations, thereby weakening the logistical system that sustains repeated illegal mining along Ghana’s rivers, farms and other environmentally sensitive areas.
The Eshaem operation is part of Operation WATER SHIELD, which aims to protect the Ankobra River, which remains under pressure from illegal mining in parts of the Western Region. NAIMOS will sustain operations along the river corridor while targeting the networks that supply the machinery, fuel, transport and other logistics required for illegal mining.
The Secretariat serves notice that persons who knowingly manufacture, fabricate, transport, store, supply, or rent equipment for illegal mining should no longer consider themselves removed from enforcement merely because they are not physically operating at a mining site. The fight against illegal mining will no longer end at the riverbank. It will extend to the workshops where illegal mining equipment is fabricated, the stores where it is kept, the vehicles used to transport it and the networks that finance and supply it.
NAIMOS will continue to work with relevant security and regulatory institutions to investigate the ownership and supply chains of equipment intercepted during operations and take appropriate action where links to illegal mining are established. The message is clear: those who provide the machines and infrastructure that enable the destruction of Ghana’s rivers are part of the problem, and the enforcement net is widening to reach them.
It is nine years since Harry Kane lingered at the back of the London Palladium at the end of a soccer awards show.
The Best FIFA Football Awards in 2017 had just concluded with Cristiano Ronaldo handed the Men’s top prize in addition to leading a team of the year including Lionel Messi, Neymar, Sergio Ramos and Gianluigi Buffon.
As the audience filed out and a few mere mortals loitered in the hope of a selfie, Kane stood near the exit, casting a longing stare at the winners on stage. He has dreamed all his life of being in their place, considered in the same breath as the game’s greats.
On Monday, at the same storied West End venue, about nine miles from his birthplace in Leytonstone, he finally is. Sat next to Lamine Yamal with last year’s winner Rodri one place further away, Kane kept company with the elite. And then he joined them.
Last week in Munich, he told reporters he had found the wait to learn the winner “very stressful” for himself and his family. The final few hours on Monday won’t have helped. The rain present earlier in the day subsided, but the controversy did not.
Less than three hours before the ceremony was due to start, the official website published a profile of Kane as the 2026 Ballon d’Or winner. Alongside one for Kylian Mbappé and Yamal. They were swiftly deleted. The entire ceremony was then delayed by 45 minutes with no official reason given, amid some speculation that the notorious London traffic was responsible.
Kane won on the undercard — the “Gerd Müller Men’s Award” or the “Striker of the Year” — to cheers from the locals in the audience. The raucous reaction from the cheap seats before addressing the crowd was a prelude to what followed. It was palpably welcome but not, by itself, an indication of the big one: Striker of the Year is not decided by vote, but simply by goals, and Kane’s 73 was the best in the men’s game.
Having waited for over a decade to live this moment, a few extra minutes made no difference in the end.
“Wow, wow, wow,” he said after taking the stage before thanking Tottenham Hotspur by saying “I wouldn’t be where I am without you” in a moment of typical class.
Monday’s Ballon d’Or triumph is the crowning moment for a player whose story of relentless professionalism and determined aspiration serves as an exemplar for any young player. British media is often criticized for prematurely building up players to an impossible level, only to then knock them down when that level is inevitably never reached.
Kane has always been a different case. He publicly judged himself against Ronaldo and Messi, two of the best in history, and used their devastating consistency as a target to match.
His numbers since joining Bayern Munich are staggering: 158 goals in 156 matches following a €120 million move from Tottenham in 2023. The Ballon d’Or voting period takes into account August 2025 to the end of the World Cup in July.
He scored 73 goals in 65 matches during that period, won the Bundesliga, the DFB-Pokal, the German Supercup and led England to their best FIFA World Cup finish in 60 years with third place, scoring six times at the tournament.
Back in 2017, “The Best” awards were a competition set up by FIFA as a rival to the Ballon d’Or after five years of partnership with organizers France Football had come to an end. Kane was on the 24-man shortlist for Best Men’s Player that year. He finished 24th. Of course, his journey to the summit began much further back.–ESPN
