A classic example of how a number of highly placed individuals in the Mills regime, are abusing their positions by engaging in unlawful activities - and getting away with it - is the disgraceful shenanigans of Ambassador Budu Saaka's long-insolvent Kibi Goldfields.
When large swathes of land in Akim Abuakwa were inundated with flood waters last year, President Mills, who happened to be visiting the area, was so horrified by the unmistakable evidence of the disastrous consequences of the activities of Akim Abuakwa's illegal gold miners, which confronted him and his entourage, that he vowed to put a halt to the illegal gold mining in the area.
His edict against illegal mining, such as it was, is being cleverly subverted by S. O. Lamptey's Solar Mining, which to all intents and purposes has reversed into Ambassador Budu Saaka's Kibi Goldfields - which describes Solar Mining as its "co-operator": simply as a ruse to enable them get away with their perfidy.
As we speak, although it says it is not doing so, in fact, Solar Mining is said to be actively mining in Kibi Goldfield's concession area - and S. O. Lamptey and his assigns apparently regularly sell gold to the Precious Minerals Marketing Company (PMMC). The question is: Why the pretence - if everything is above board? For the information of the authorities, some of the people of Saamang, are said to be tracking those sales.
Yet, if this had been a nation in which officialdom actually cared about, and placed some value, on the natural environment, as a result of the company's repeated past defiance of EPA officials - who at a point in time repeatedly asked it to halt mining gold illegally at Akim Abuakwa Juaso - that company would never be able to secure the necessary valid permits, either alone or as a legitimate concession owner's so-called "co-operator", from the regulatory bodies, which superintend the mining industry - because an entity with such a past record of repeated defiance of the EPA, would not be deemed trustworthy and ethical enough by regulators, to be allowed to mine a concession part of which borders an area with a delicate and sensitive ecology.
How can this outrage, in which greedy and ruthless individuals, put their own personal wealth creation agenda, before the common weal - and more or less have carte blanche to destroy streams and rivers with impunity, in pursuance of that sodden personal agenda - be allowed to go on in what is supposed to be a civilised African nation?
Are the authorities not aware that the people of Saamang, for example, being individuals with considerable foresight, and who clearly also have common sense in abundance, continue to refuse to allow Solar Mining and its co-conspirator (in the hoodwinking of officialdom) Kibi Goldfields, to destroy their cocoa farms and the only stream in the area now remaining wholesome, the Akorsoo?
To enable a few wealthy and well-connected rogues to enrich themselves yet further, should the genuine needs of the cocoa farmers of Saamang, and their human right to be able to continue making a living as farmers on their own land, continue to be disregarded so flagrantly by the authorities - in a nation in which the rule of law is said to exist, and which is also apparently a constitutional democracy, I ask?
The question is : Precisely what is President Mills' regime going to do about the calumny and sophistry of the promoters of Solar Mining and Ambassador Budu Saaka's Kibi Goldfields' disgraceful conduct in conspiring with Solar Mining to enable it short-circuit the laid down regulatory framework governing the activities of surface gold miners - and thus be in a position to actively mine gold, more less through the back-door, as it were, in Akim Abuakwa: and get away with it?
The president's advisors must understand that there is widespread belief in Akim Abuakwa that Solar Mining has bought its way to the very top in the corridors of power at the Osu Castle, Ghana's seat of power, and is consequently untouchable - which is why its promoters fear no one in Ghana. It may be complete nonsense of course, but it is a perception that nonetheless persists - in the face of Solar Mining's perfidy.
(Shades of the infernal arrogance of a certain someone embroiled in a judgement-debt payment scandal, I hear someone say - and is that perchance why its promoters are carrying on as if they think that everyone in the Ghana of President Mills, who matters, has a price, one wonders? But I digress.)
The President ought to prove all those sceptics wrong - by moving swiftly to have the police arrest S. O. Lamptey and Ambassador Budu Saaka - and charging them with mining gold illegally and conspiring to cover it up by misleading officials of the Minerals Commission and the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), about the true nature, and purpose, of their so-called "co-operator" arrangement, which has enabled Solar Mining to literally get away with its illegal activities of so many years.
One hopes that there will not be the usual procrastination that has become a byword for this hard-of-hearing regime, in this matter.
They must not wait till that ruthless gang of wealthy rogues, Solar Mining - which is effectively operating illegally with such impunity if truth be told, because it has secured access to a gold concession that it is using as legal cover to engage in mining without having to obtain the requisite official permits itself - permanently compromises the integrity of an area that borders part of Kibi Goldfields concession, and which has been declared a Globally Significant Biodiversity Area (GSBA), the Atewa Forest Reserve.
Finally, it is difficult, dear reader, to fathom how a bankrupt entity has succeeded in hanging on to a gold concession, for as long as Ambassador Budu Saaka's Kibi Goldfields has - when the rules governing the granting of gold concessions, clearly do not permit bankrupt entities to own gold concessions, in any part of Ghana. Otherwise, just how would the reclamation of land degraded by gold mining, be funded - if bankrupt entities could legally hang on to their concessions in Ghana, I ask?
Above all, President Mills must act now to ensure that the part of Kibi Goldfields' concession, which borders an ecologically sensitive area in the unique Atewa Range upland evergreen rain forest - designated a GSBA - is not permanently destroyed by those greedy and arrogant rogues, the promoters of Solar Mining. This is a nation of laws, is it not? A word to the wise...
Tel (Powered by Tigo - the one mobile phone network in Ghana that actually works!): + 233 (0) 27 745 3109.
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