Former Minister of Environment, Science, Technology and Innovation, Professor Kwabena Frimpong-Boateng
Professor Kwabena Frimpong-Boateng

The National Democratic Congress has said it will formally submit requests to both the Parliament of the Republic of Ghana and the Office of the Special Prosecutor to initiate a public inquiry and the needed investigations into the Professor Frimpong Boateng Galamsey report.

Addressing the media on the galamsey menace and the report under reference, Sammy Gyamfi, the National Communications Officer of the NDC, said their party “…have always maintained, President Akufo-Addo’s proclaimed fight against galamsey was the biggest scam ever to be perpetrated on Ghanaians.”

The NDC also says it feels vindicated by the damning content of “the report authored and presented by the former Minister of Environment and Science and former Chairman of the Inter-Ministerial Committee against Illegal Mining, Prof. Frimpong Boateng.”

The party says its long-held position that there has never been any genuine commitment or any attempt to fight galamsey by this government has been validated.

“The so-called fight against galamsey was a charade calculated to enable top government and NPP functionaries to appropriate and takeover the illicit galamsey trade,” the party official added.

In highlighting eight key aspects of the Professor Frimpong Boateng galamsey report, the NDC revealed how “President Akufo-Addo placed a moratorium on April 1, 2017, suspending all artisanal and small-scale mining in the country for a combined period of one year, three months” while, “strangely however, Frimpong Boateng’s galamsey report tells us that in 2018, this same Akufo-Addo government acting through the Forestry Commission and the Ministry of Lands and Natural Resources, somehow contrived to give out forest reserves in Ghana for mining activities.”