Veteran Broadcaster Dr Randy Abbey has slammed the presidency over its response to the report on illegal small-scale mining in Ghana by former Minister of Environment, Science, Technology, and Innovation and ex-chair of the Inter-Ministerial Committee on Illegal Mining (IMCIM), Prof Kwabena Frimpong-Boateng.
Speaking on his Good Morning Ghana programme on Tuesday, Dr Abbey said that after failing to act on the report for over two years, Akufo-Addo’s office is now telling Ghanaians that the report is full of personal grievances of Prof Frimpong Boateng.
He said that the allegations made against the president and some leading figures in his government by his former appointee and former head of the task force he (the president) put in place to fight galamsey are serious and should be treated as such.
He suggested that President Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo and his office with the posture they have taken on the matter are taking Ghanaians for granted.
“How does a president who told the world including Ghanaians that he was prepared to put his presidency on the line for the galamsey fight, describe this new document submitted to his chief of staff …. as a report of personal grievances?
“For a government that has spent hundreds of millions of dollars, what we are losing as a nation, how we have galvanised the entire country and even the globe to support this particular project if no mean a person than the same minister, who chaired the taskforce sent a report like this, he mentions the president, he mentions ministers, he mentions people at the presidency, he mentions people who have influence… at the least don’t these people deserve the opportunity to clear their names.
“Does the president himself not deserve the opportunity to clear his name? Because if indeed it is true that the devastation of the forest and who was responsible for that was made known to the president in the presence of that person and he did nothing, that is a serious indictment," he said.
“If issues of influence peddling we reported to the president and he did nothing about them, those are serious issues. So why will this report be with the presidency for more than two years, nothing is done about it… and then when it comes to the public domain, we are told that these are reports of personal grievances. Yet the CID is called to come and investigate, how do you make sense out of these,” Dr Randy Abbey reiterated.
Background:
A former Minister of Environment, Science, Technology and Innovation, Prof Kwabena Frimpong Boateng, has named members of parliaments and top government officials who are allegedly involved in illegal small-scale mining (galamsey) in Ghana.
Portions of a report on illegal small-scale mining (galamsey) in Ghana by Prof Frimpong Boateng, indicated that these MPs and government officials were either directly involved in galamsey or were using their power to protect relations who were involved in the menace.
The 36-page report, which Prof Frimpong addressed to the Chief of Staff and the Ghana Police Service, according to myjoyonline.com, implicated the former MP for Manso Nkwanta, Joseph Albert Quarm; director of operations at the presidency, Lord Commey; executive assistant and head of social media at the presidency, Charles Nii Teiko; and Frank Asiedu Bekoe, director of political affairs at the Office of the Chief of Staff.
Prof Frimpong Boateng also accused the Minister of Information, Kojo Oppong Nkrumah, of hatching a plot to bring him down over his (Frimpong Boateng’s) fight against the menace.
Some of the people the former science and technology minister implicated including Lord Commey and Oppong Nkrumah have come out to refute his allegations.
Reacting to the allegations in the report, the Office of the President also indicated that the report was not an official report formally delivered to the Office of the President.
It described the 37-page report as a catalogue of personal grievances by Prof. Frimpong-Boateng, intended to respond to some issues he faced as Chairperson of the IMCIM.
It added that whilst Prof. Frimpong-Boateng makes serious allegations against some government appointees, as having been involved in, supporting or interfering with the fight against illegal mining, not a single piece of evidence was adduced or presented to enable the claims to be properly investigated.
The Office of the President described the allegations contained in the document as hearsay.
Watch Dr Abbey’s remarks below:
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