Chairman of the inter-ministerial task force against illegal mining Alhaji Inusah Fuseini, has challenged Hansol mining company to provide evidence of wild allegations leveled against the operations of the taskforce. The Public Relations Officer of mining firm Hansol, Edward Kwasi Akuoko made allegations of physical assault, destruction of property, stealing and looting of processed gold and cash in both local and foreign currency. He also accused the taskforce of gross extortion, setting ablaze of some site structures and equipment and in some instances, direct shooting of our Chinese staff, some of which leads to deaths. But Alhaji Fusieni who is also Lands and Natural Resources Minister spoke on Joy Fm’s News Night and stressed that the work of the taskforce was not targeted at any person but at sanitizing small-scale mining sector. He proceeded to raise doubts about the veracity of these claims. “I would be quite surprised that the national security taskforce has embarked on this assignment with impunity”, he said. He said pictorial and visual evidence of such destruction as reported by Hansol established a prima facie case but was not sufficient evidence to back their claim. “You need more, you need the date when the building was attacked, who were those who led the operation” Alhaji Inusah said these scenarios of unfounded allegation were common. He cited a picture of a person purportedly shot dead as a result of the operations of the taskforce to buttress his point. But the death certificate showed the incident happened in 2010, he revealed, adding the task force began work on 1st June 2013. Nonetheless, the Minister acknowledged that persons pursuing their ‘legitimate concerns’ could be ‘caught in the cross-fire’ of the inter-ministerial taskforce because of the ‘general nature of the directive’ He said such victims were empowered to report any incident. “We have made room for people who believe the taskforce has acted improperly to report to us and bring us the evidence…when you give us the surrounding facts then you properly are invoking our jurisdiction to investigate”, he asserted.