A 23-year-old illegal miner has died after drowning in a pit near the Offin River in the Atwima Mponua District of the Ashanti Region.

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Accra-based Citi FM reports that the deceased, identified as Abu Ibrahim, drowned at around 6:00pm after being stuck in the pit.

Explaining how matters unfolded, the Assembly Member for Nkrumah-Bentinko Electoral area, Martin Prempeh, said two boys visited the site to mine but saw one of them drown while going on with the activity.

According to him, pinion leaders in the area have to perform some rituals before the divers will be able to recover the body from the river.

“Yesterday [Monday], around 6.oclock in the evening, I had information that one guy had drowned in a river so I went to a town called Amadaa to verify whether it is true or not. Two boys went there to do some mining so it was during the operation that this unfortunate incident happened,”  he said.

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This comes just under a month after two pupils of the Methodist Primary School at Akyem Takorase in the Denkyembuor District of the Eastern Region lost their lives when they went swimming in an abandoned galamsey pit.

The Government of Ghana has been hard on illegal mining activities in the country, popularly known as galamsey, having instituted a joint Police and military force to deal with the canker.