The Upper East Regional Youth Organizer of the opposition National Democratic Congress (NDC), Abraham Azumah Lambon, the New Patriotic Party (NPP) government has failed in the fight against one of the country’s biggest problems in the mining sector; illegal mining also known as galamsey.
Mr. Lambon said this on A1 Radio in reaction to the vetting of the National Security Minister-designate, Albert Kan Dapaah.
According to him, “The fight against galamsey was a total failure, total flop. But will you blame Kan Dapaah? Because it was the NPP government themselves – they were looking for money to finance their campaign. So they decided to seize the excavators and gave them back to their party boys to go and mine.’ You see, sometimes it is very difficult fighting in the interest of the nation and fighting in the interest of the party. What we saw was that Kan Dapaah couldn’t fight his own party structures and that’s why he failed woefully.”
The NDC Organizer noted that “Now, everybody admits galamsey has been amplified. If you go to our forests, everything has been destroyed. And if you trace, you trace back to NPP financiers and NPP boys.”
He continued that “You have a minister in charge of Environment, Science and Technology whose son was involved in illegal mining. You have the Central Regional Vice Chairman of the NPP involved in illegal mining; and not to talk about the Ashanti Regional Chairman. So the galamsey fight was cosmetic, it was meant to deceive the public that government was doing something but in actual sense, they were going through the backdoor to mine to finance their 2020 campaign.
Meanwhile, Deputy Communications Officer of NPP in the Upper East Region, John Ayine, maintained his government’s fight against galamsey has has been impressive.
Despite admitting some challenges confronting the national campaign against the menace, Mr. Ayine believes the National Security Ministry, headed by Mr. Kan Dapaah is relevant in the continuous fight; hence the presidents decision to retain the ministry.
Source: A1Radioonline.com|101.1MHz|Ghana
