A consortium of Civil Society organizations (CSOs) led by KASA Initiative has openly accused officials of the Mineral Commission of biasness and compromise.
The officials of Mineral Commission led by Richard Kojo Afenu, Ag Director, Policy, Planning and Monitoring is investigating two joint venture mining companies, Cardero Ghana Ltd and Emmaland Resources ltd accused by CSOs of an alleged unacceptable mining practices in Sheini community.
The allegations contained in a briefing paper indicted the companies for a number of unacceptable practices in Sheini. Based on this, the Parliamentary Select Committee on Mines and Energy tasked the commission to investigate these allegations. Following this directive, the Mineral Commission constituted a team to investigate the claims.
After several unsuccessful meetings with the commission, the CSOs requested that the report should be validated at the community level. The suspicious attitudes and utterances by members of the commission investigating the report necessitated the request to validate the report on the ground.
In one instance, the investigative insisted the CSOs never visited Sheini and could not have met with the people. But all issues were confirmed at the community during the validating meeting, the officials changed their stance from “never” to “exaggeration”. The commission investigating the matter insisted that the publication was untrue which they later changed to “exaggeration” when .
Based on this open condemnation of the report by the investigative team led by Richard Afenu, members of CSOs protested the manner in which Mr. Afenu and his team were probing the issues.
At a meeting with Tatale/Sabgule District Chief Executive (DCE), Hon Nicholas Waake (listen to DCE on video), for example, Mr. Afenu openly condemned the publication though he was to ascertain the truth or otherwise of the issues contained in the said publication.
This, the CSOs said contravened the principle of fair investigation and openly accused the commission for being bias and compromise.
“Ironically, the commission started condemning the publication before the Tatale/Sangule District Assembly Authorities and repeated same at the community level. The commission was unhappy when the Assembly authority said their independent investigations proved that what was reported on did happened.
Thanked God the community and district authority overwhelming admitted to the issues contained in the publication, so we are happy”, said the national Coordinator of Kasa Initiative, Mr Kwame Mensah.
“This investigation is the first of its kind; they have formed their opinion before we visited the community and when they realized things were not going their way, they started messing up. For instead, on the pollution of water, Mr Afenu asked the community to tell the fact finding team the type of chemicals that were washed into the water body knowing very well that the community people do not know names and types of chemicals used in mining, yet Mr. Afenu is demanding exact chemicals’ names, he said.
He said “when we interjected, the leader turned on us”. His condemnation of the publication he said was unfortunate and indicates a feeling of compromise of a sort.
“We won’t accept the way you are probing the matter, the DCE just indicated to you that they did their independent investigations and found that the number of issues raised in the publication did happen, yet you still find it difficult to accept that. This biasness is clear and we will not accept your way of investigations”, said, Mr. Kassim, Executive Director of Rural Media Network.
“If they were interested in the welfare of Ghanaians and for that matter Ghana, they will have acted on this information long before the MPs direct them to investigate the matter”, he added.
Mr. Kassim stressed “Officials of mineral commission is not only bias in this case, they are swimming in conflict of interest”. He pointed out that, aside condemning the publication before validation, the commission made the companies under investigations to pay for almost every service they requested for.
He cited for example, fueling of police escort vehicle, payment of per diem to journalists among other things. “I was very happy when the journalists protested against such dishonest act”. These are all inducement and against the underlying principles of fair investigations”, he added.
Mr. Francis Npong, the National Coordinator of MASE said “this investigation is useless, time and resource wasting because the commission had formed their own opinion about the case.
He said he is happy the District Assembly and Sheini community people have confirmed the issues contained in the publication and that the opinion of the mineral commission does not matter to him anymore. “As CSOs we have done a great job by bringing these issues out, so we are ok if the commission clears the companies of any wrong doing, their conscience will hunt them”, he said.
Mr. Emmanuel Afreh, Acting Manager, monitoring and Evaluation of the commission was heard exclaiming “Over my dead body that I will write a report to favour you (CSOs)”. When a CSO member asked him “why did allow the Cardero and Emmaland Resources to pay for the fuel of the police escort vehicle, dont you think that is wrong? the same officer “roared like a wounded lion” and said “none of your business”.
Mr. Richard in his efforts to find fault in CSOs, he consistently and persistently stressed on the word “prospecting” not mining. But according to the Mineral act of Ghana, mining including prospecting and anything leading to large scale mining. Please check for details.
Recently, the Canadian police launch an investigation into the activities of Cardero Resources Corp over the allegations of bribery and corruption which has since been closed.
The CSOs allegations labeled against these mining companies include pollution of water source, destruction of footbridge, food crops and economic and teak plantation without any financial compensation to the affected farmers.
The CSOs commended the Parliamentary Select Committee on Mines and Energy for the quick response to the issue saying “left to the commission, nothing would have happened on this case”. They however, suggested that issues like this should always be handled by independent bodies because the commission is because commission’s negligence is the cause of problems in mining communities in the country.
The commission is yet to respond to a questionnaire a CSO member sent to them fr their response to the allegation of biasness and compromise. Stay tuned.
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