Musician and politician Kwame Asare Obeng (A-Plus) has said officials of the Akufo-Addo administration are deeply involved in the illicit small scale mining (galamsey) but the President has failed to punish them in accordance with law.
A-Plus told TV3’s Roland Walker in an interview in relation to the National Dialogue on Small Scale Mining held Wednesday, April 14 that the president lacks commitment in bringing the menace to an end because he has failed to deal with people within his government and party who are engaged in the illegal trade.
“There is nobody who can go out there and do galamsey when his Excellency has said we should not unless you have a certain power.”
“There is no Chinese who can walk into the country and enter the bush and start doing galamsey. Aisha Huang who was arrested and we repatriated her to her country was being protected by the same people who claim to be fighting galamsey.”
“The ordinary people are not into galamsey anymore, it is the same Akufo-Addo government officials who are into galamsey and so what is this hypocrisy going on?” He said.
Meanwhile, President Nana Akufo-Addo has said at the forum that he will not act on hearsay in his quest to end the galamsey practice in Ghana.
“I am determined to enforce the laws on illegal mining no matter the subject, high or low. I will, however, not act on hearsay or mere allegations without more. I will not hesitate to act though where the evidence is hard before the police.
“And I will do so irrespective of the standing of the person or persons involved. That is the true meaning of equality before the law,” he stressed.
“There are aspects of our national life which are of first subject matters of partisan politics. We must however come to the understanding that small scale mining with the requirement to do away with the illegalities in that sector should be beyond partisan politics.
“Some subjects simply cannot be part of our everyday politicking and I use this forum to insist that illegal small-scale mining and matters relating to it should be one of such issues requiring national efforts,” he said.
