Don't kill Menzgold – Youth to SEC

The Coalition of Concerned Youth of Ghana (CCYG), a youth advocate group, has embarked on a demonstration to register its displeasure against the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) for shutting down Menzgold Ghana’s gold vault investment operations.

The demonstration, which took place at Kasoa in the Central Region on Wednesday, 19 September 2018, ended at the Oduponkwei Park where the group converged to relay its concerns to the government on issues relating to the recent SEC directive to Menzgold.

Vice President of the group, Benjamin Amuzu told Class91.3FM that: “For the past fifteen years, no government has opened even a single company since we introduced democracy into our system, rather so many companies are being collapsed here and there.

"Currently, when you move to look for a job as a youth, what they tell you is that try to be an entrepreneur and come up with your own idea and open a company and if these same young men will go to town and think about a serious innovation, come out with it and these same people that we use our tax money to pay them, sit at the Securities and Exchange Commission, they sit at the Bank of Ghana and their only concern is to collapse someone’s business for their business to flourish, that is why we have come together and want to demonstrate and show the government that enough is enough. You wouldn’t open for anybody and when the youth come up with ideas, they try to kill the ideas which we think is not appropriate.”

The group says there will be an increase in the rate of unemployment if Menzgold is not reopened.

“Let’s look at the number of youth, young women and young men that are working under Menzgold. Quite recently, you’ve collapsed about three banks, are you thinking about the number of people that are working within that bank, how are they going to survive? How are they going to take care of their kids, wives and their parents? Mr Amuzu questioned.

"When you collapse Menzgold’s business, how many people are going to sit at home, let’s add the number to the number of those that were sacked from these banks or that are going to be losing their jobs and we are talking about 10,000 or 8,000 people."

“All we are saying is that open Menzgold; don’t shut the company down or don’t try to kill it or the brand of the company before maybe you go on the negotiation table.”