Member of the Communications Team of the opposition National Democratic Congress (NDC), Abraham Amaliba, has called the President a ‘pretender’ on the issue of small-scale illegal mining, popularly known as galamsey.
Speaking on the Key Points on TV3 Saturday October 8, Amaliba said the President is well aware of the galamsey problem and has simple chosen not to act, hence his recent meeting with the National House of Chiefs was nothing more than a show.
“The president is a pretender, he created the impression as if this is the first time he is hearing about these galamsey matters,” he said.
“This President doesn’t understand what it means to be commander-in-chief of the Ghana Armed Forces…now you go into a meeting with chiefs who don’t have any responsibility to stop crime going on because they’re just left with their bare hands, you have state machinery over 40,000 police officers, 16,000 soldiers, our water bodies are being polluted and what you can do is go and old a useless closed-door meeting with chiefs,” he fumed. “The president has failed in one of his duties, he should apologize to the people that he intended well but he has been overwhelmed.”
Amaliba added that whilst the ‘useless closed-door’ meeting was ongoing, the galamseyers were having a field day mining gold.
“On that day that they were holding the discussion…it was a field day for galamseyers as focus was on Manhyia. so you don’t know whether this President has come to put some veil in our faces and think that we don’t know what is happening.”
Amaliba’s comments come after Nana Akufo-Addo held a highly publcised meeting with the National House of Chiefs to discuss the galamsey menace.
“Since I took office I have made it a central feature of my presidency to lead in the efforts to rid our country of this menace which we all now call galamsey. It has not been popular and we have not got the result that I was looking for,” Mr Akufo-Addo said during a meeting with the National House of Chiefs and the Municipal, Metropolitan and District Chief Executives (MMDCEs) in Kumasi on Wednesday October 5.