Dumasi people give Bogoso Gold ultimatum

Dumasi (W/R), March 17, GNA- The people of Dumasi, a farming community near Bogoso, has given the Bogoso Gold Limited (BGL) a week's ultimatum to re-employ 21 people who the company has declared redundant else they would advise themselves.

Speaking in an interview with the GNA on behalf of the affected people, Nana Kofi Dei, an elder of the village, said in declaring the 21 people redundant, the company has breached an agreement made with them when their lands were acquired for the construction of the company's tailings dam.

Nana Dei said the company agreed to employ from among the 17 families whose farmlands were affected, 30 people as regular junior staffs.

Those who would be employed would be retrained where necessary but this, he said, the company failed to do and rather gave them menial jobs.

Nana Dei said if the company had declared their people redundant, then they have every right to reclaim their lands. ''If after one week nothing is done about the situation, then we will move to the land and remove the pump and plastics and give it back to them and we will also ask them to return the land to its original position because that is the only source of livelihood for us.'' Mr Justice Oppong, chief farmer of the village, decried the sort of treatment being meted out to them by BGL.

He said victims of the cyanide spillage had not been given any proper treatment, adding, "Our lives are being taken for granted".