The District Chief Executive Officer for Birim North, Raymond Nana Damptey has responded to a circulated video portraying him to be preventing the Kotoku Taskforce from stopping alleged illegal miners from bringing their equipment to mining sites.

According to him, he was only questioning their legitimacy as the head of the District Security Council since the said task force was wielding sophisticated guns creating fear and panic in the town.

Raymond Nana Damptey denied taking such action and stated clearly, that, as the head of DISEC, he wanted to ensure people use legitimate means in addressing a security concern in his jurisdiction.

"I have never involved myself in galamsey. Anybody who knows me well will tell you, this man is against illegal mining. There's no way I'll go against what the President doesn't approve of," he said

The DCE explained that he wanted to inquire why the task force would decide to stop and impound an excavator when its destination was unknown.

He added that he was only safeguarding the security of his people since there have been a series of armed robbery attacks and serial killings in which they have been unable to clamp down on the perpetrators.

• Read also: 20 illegal miners arrested at New Abirem, equipment seized

He stated that he will not tolerate any act that will compromise the security and the safety of the people, assuring that, if upon further interrogations, it comes out that, the supposed Kotoku Task force has no legal mandate to operate, they will chase them out of the district.

He said, he is not against their supposed fight against galamsey but must operate legally since the area has had some terrible experiences whereby people claiming to be task force and wielding sophisticated weapons later turned out to be armed robbers.

He however urged Ghanaians to disregard the video since it was the creation of some selfish individuals who, over the years tried hard to tarnish his image.

"For the past two to three years, armed robbers have been terrorizing us. Every now and then, they were killing people so we have been keenly following security measures. So my intention was to engage them to know if they were a licensed security group who could wield arms in the middle of a road. We wanted to find out if their arms were licensed and who legitimize their activities.

During our exchanges, the Chief of Abirem who is the leader of the task force approached and instructed them to release the excavator because no one could tell where the excavator was heading. You cannot see an excavator and just conclude that it's going to be used for illegal mining," he explained.

Nana Damptey stated that the district will report the activities of the task force to the Regional Security Council to deal with the issue.

"We'll report the matter to the REGSEC to investigate their operations and if they are not legitimate, we'll disband it," he warned.