MTN Ghana says its field engineers working around Osino in the Fanteakwa South District of the Eastern Region face attacks from illegal miners while repairing fibre cables damaged by mining activity.
According to Citi Newsroom, the company's network manager for the Eastern, Volta and Oti regions, Samuel Duku, made the comments to Channel One TV on the sidelines of the 2026 MTN Editors and Stakeholders Forum in Koforidua.
Mr Duku said illegal miners have cut MTN's fibre cables, causing outages, and that engineers attending to the cuts late at night are sometimes mistaken for law enforcement officers.
He said that in the most recent incident on the Osino corridor, a team sent to restore a night-time outage was mistaken for NAIMOS and national security operatives and nearly attacked, forcing the engineers to run from the site.
He said engineers in the area are now forced to work under police protection to restore fibre cuts caused by illegal miners.
No arrests linked to the incidents were reported, and the people involved have not been identified.