The government is to pay an amount of $15milion to a licensed mining company as judgment debt for seizing excavators and other mining equipment from them and then losing them.
That is the claim of the Editor-In-Chief of the New Crusading Guide, Abdul Malik Kweku Baako Jnr.
According to him, while the government is on a rampage to burn down excavators of persons who are illegally operating in the sector, it has unfortunately fallen on the wrong side of the law for seizing and then losing some equipment of a duly licensed mining company.
Speaking on the Good Morning Ghana programme on Metro TV on Thursday, May 27, 2021, and monitored by GhanaWeb, Kweku Baako Jnr explained that this new judgment debt case is as recent as October of 2020.
He was responding to the response of President Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo’s statement that anybody who feels wronged from the burning of their excavators should go to the court for redress.
“To go out there and just burn, I find it difficult to reconcile because it’s not in the law and that is why I am inclined to say that if you want to do that, please amend the law; you amend the law then you know what to do and we can even do it under certificate of urgency, through Parliament, and get the law to approve what you are doing.
“Let me tell you something. I’ve heard something and I’ve been having the debate: “You see, we’ve seized excavators before and those excavators got lost and was used against us in terms of propaganda so that this time, don’t give anybody the chance to make anything disappear. I feel a bit sad when I hear those things. There’s a case that has gone to court and I won’t mention the details, based on excavators that were seized from a licensed company and got missing – not just excavators but other mining equipment and the court has ruled against the government of Ghana. This is recent (October 2020).
“The excavators got lost, cannot be found. The court had given an order for preservation or something as the law sees it, to close it up, the court says, Ghana government, pay $15million judgment debt. It is stated here. So, what are we going to do? We are going to pay, and that is why I was drawing the line of distinction that there are some that are licensed to do their business, and so if we are not careful in this fight that we all want, some practices and methods could undermine the integrity of the thing,” he said.
