SOLAR MINING AGAIN!

…Accused of using police/military to harass residents

STORY: KORYEKPOR AWLESU FREEMAN

A group calling itself, Youth for Action Ghana, is up in arms against what it describes as persistent harassment of residents of Akyem Saaman, a farming community in the Eastern Region, by a combined team of military and police personnel, following the residents opposition to the mining activities of Solar Mining Limited, a private mining company.

“We cannot allow these persistent abuses to continue in Saaman, particularly when it has been   universally acknowledged that mining has been a curse for our country. We want to call on well-meaning Ghanaians to rise up and join the people of Saaman to fight for their rights,” the group urged.

At a charged press conference in Accra last Monday which was addressed by its President, Kwabena Bonfeh, (aka Kabila), the group described the move by state security agencies to back Solar Mining as “unlawful and shameful.”

“The Youth for Action once again wish to express our utmost disgust at the unjustifiable abuses and glaring injustices being perpetrated against the people of Saaman by Solar Mining with a supreme support of a combined team of soldiers and police who think the rights of the people in the area do not matter in their commercial pursuit.”

He therefore recalled the unlawful arrest and detention of the assembly member for the area and 14 others by the Eastern regional police, and their subsequent release without any charge being leveled against them.

He lamented that the worst of the abuses is the decision by the Fanteakwa District Assembly to deny people in the community their fair share of the national cake as a form of punishment for the determination to fight for their rights in not consenting to the illegal activities of the company.

The roofs of the block of the District Assembly (DA) Primary School were ripped off as a result of a heavy downpour

Mr. Bonfeh who was extremely angry, called on the National Security Coordinator, Mr. Larry Gbevlo Lartey, and Inspector General of Police (IGP), Mr. Paul Tawiah Quaye, to immediately set a commission of enquiry to investigate the matter in order to bring the two security operatives of the state to book.

He bemoaned that the situation is so pervasive to the extent that the people in the area seriously struggle to make ends meet.

He revealed that “Solar Mining Limited had been prospecting for gold illegally in the Saaman community under the pretext of working for Kibi Goldfields. And under the guise of prospecting, the company has been using the police and military to unjustifiable harass people in the community.”