Former Member of Parliament for Ablekuma Central in the Greater Accra Region Theophilus Tetteh Chaie has strongly challenged the approach adopted by the current administration in the fight against illegal mining activities in the country.
He has described the approach used by the government as heartless, illegal and incoherent and has to be condemned by anyone who is a law abiding citizen.
He is irked that the government, after failing to fight the menace in its first term, is still using the military to ruthlessly harass the miners and destroy excavators confiscated from mining sites without thorough investigations or a court order.
The Greater Accra Regional Secretary of the National Democratic Congress (NDC), speaking on Yen Sempa on Onua FM on Thursday, May 27, tagged Nana Addo as a lawless president who is using illegal means to solve an illegal problem.
Mr Tetteh Chaie challenged President Akufo-Addo to fix the lawlessness in the quest to fight against galamsey if he is really committed to end the illegal mining menace in the country.
“We say that we are solving the problem but we can’t use an illegal means to solve an illegal problem; it amounts to a total lawlessness.
“If the president is leading the country where the people are into illegal mining and he would use the military to confiscate their equipment without allowing them to go through the due process and burn the equipment then it is a state of lawlessness and it tells you that the president himself is lawless,” he reiterated.
The former legislator indicated that the government has disregarded the mining laws and somewhat using a wrong approach and illegal means to end illegal mining where the perpetrators are not arrested to face the law.
He insisted that the National Democratic Congress (NDC) is in support of government’s efforts to regulate mining activities to protect the forest reserve and water bodies but the party would not in any way support illegal means to solve illegal problems.
He thus suggested to the government to go to Parliament and have the mining laws reviewed so that the path taken in the fight against galamsey would be in consonance with the law to avoid future judgement debt.
