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The National Democratic Congress (NDC) has no moral right to criticise the Akufo-Addo administration when it comes to the issue of illegal small scale mining (Galamsey), a Deputy Director of Communications of the New Patriotic Party (NPP) Ernest Owusu Bempah has said.
He said the conduct of the NDC is like the pot calling the kettle black because their track record in the galamsey menace is ‘horrible’.
His comments come on the heels of the utterances of the National Communications Officer of the NDC Sammy Gyamfi who, during the press conference, described as “galamsey kingpins” all the government appointees cited in the Professor Kwabena Frimpong-Boateng report.
The report details the operations of the erstwhile Inter-Ministerial Committee on Illegal Mining (IMCIM), citing some government officials for working against the spirited fight against the destruction of forests and water bodies.
Prof Frimpong-Boateng indicated that only two ministers – Water and Sanitation and Local Government and Rural Development – kept faith with the mandate of the Committee.
All the rest including the Information Minister, Kojo Oppong Nkrumah, abandoned the Committee, according to the celebrated heart surgeon.
He said many of the appointees of President Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo were neck-deep in galamsey and engaged in the activity with reckless abandon. He added the report underscored the fact that “illegal mining has been a free-for-all enterprise” of appointees of government. Sammy Gyamfi showed faces of all appointees cited in the report.
“Our nation stands united crying for justice. Anything short of a bi-partisan inquiry into this matter will be fiercely resisted,” he said.
But in a statement responding to him, Mr Owusu-Bempah said “As for Sammy Gyamfi, his sense of self importance outsized his myopia. He waded into this matter and made off handed remarks about people mentioned in the so-called Frimpong-Boateng report and claim he is leading the charge about the galamsey fight, not knowing to this opportunistic partisan falcon, it was the Mahama administration that shamelessly launched the Youth in Small Scale Mining programme in the Eastern Region, which apparently opened the floodgate for galamsey.
“Indeed, this is a no brainer situation, but then, NDC leaders like Sammy Gyamfi appears to have no brains or conscience. Their conduct is like the pot calling the kettle black because their track record in the galamsey menace is horrible.
“For those that may have missed this; the erstwhile Mahama government issued an infinite resident permit to Aisha Huang. Precisely on 28th March 2015, Aisha Huang was given an indefinite resident permit to live here in perpetuity and to engage in galamsey activities. This happened under the Mahama administration. Meanwhile, she was unsuccessful in getting the permit during the President Kufour era.
“So you see, any dastardly attempt by the NDC to rationalize the political economy of galamsay must be roundly condemned. It is beyond dispute that under John Mahama-led government, the national record of the deleterious impact of galamsay left a lot to be desired. It was simply unprecedented.”
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