Professor Kwabena Frimpong-Boateng, Chairman of the erstwhile Inter-Ministerial Committee on Illegal Mining (IMCIM) and Former Minister for Environment, Science, Technology and Innovation, has claimed he really wants the issue of Illegal small-scale mining (galamsey) solved in the country.
Prof Frimpong-Boateng in an interview, stated: “I still have my ideas and methods as to what can be done, so if a committee is set up or if something is done and I am called in private or in a committee to expand on my ideas, I will do that but I don’t want to do that in the public now.”
“I don’t want to continue on that trajectory, the public can discuss it but I don’t want to be seen to be talking about the report. I am a very serious person, I want a targeted approach to solving this problem, so if there is a committee and my ideas are still needed, I am still a Ghanaian and I really want this menace to be put aside.
“I was the chairman two years ago and I have articulated all my concerns in that report and I don’t want to go back to discuss it, what I wrote was not meant for public consumption and I believe that the president has ordered some investigations, let us respect his orders, move on and see how we can bring this under control.”
Prof Frimpong-Boateng
However, he said, he had to be brutally frank with the President on issues of galamsey as part of the solution to the problem.
Asked whether he stands by the contents of the report despite the attacks on it by some officials of the government, Prof Frimpong-Boateng said: “Yes.”
Prof Frimpong-Boateng Claims It Was Not Easy Writing About His Colleagues
Prof Frimpong-Boateng avers it was not easy for him to write about his own colleague ministers in the report of the IMCIM.
“It wasn’t an easy thing writing about some of my colleagues but I had to be brutally honest with the president and that is why I did what I did. I could have said, Mr President, everything is ok, it is under control, maybe given a chance we will be able to do it, write some wishy-washy thing and then not achieve anything.
“I had to be honest with myself and knowing the President, who he is, he wanted the truth and I did that from my point of view.”
Prof Frimpong-Boateng
His report implicated a wide number of government officials, most of whom have denied the allegations in the report.
For instance, he cited Information Minister, Kojo Oppong Nkrumah for gathering a group of journalists at the Forest Hotel in Dodowa to begin a mudslinging campaign against the respected heart surgeon, while he chaired the Committee. According to Prof Frimpong-Boateng, the meeting of journalists from the New Patriotic Party (NPP) and National Democratic Congress (NDC) media houses, was to “discuss a strategy to bring me Kwabena Frimpong-Boateng down.”
He complained Kojo Oppong Nkrumah, who is also a Member of Parliament for Ofoase-Ayirebi, never called him about the missing excavators, though he was part of the Inter-Ministerial Committee.
“If Kojo Oppong Nkrumah and the likes of him have presidential ambitions, they should pursue it on merit and not attempt to destroy a hard-working patriot, whose only ambition is work to achieve a Ghana Beyond Aid,” the old professor had concluded in the report dated Friday, March 19, 2021.
However, Kojo Oppong Nkrumah in response wondered: “What would I, a much younger man, seek to gain from bringing down a person as well respected as Prof Boateng? I had no interest in his profession, his politics or his portfolios. I have absolutely nothing to gain from sullying his reputation.”
He advised Prof Frimpong-Boateng to have interrogated that call from his journalist friend about the supposed ‘secret’ meeting at Dodowa, before drawing his conclusions. Oppong Nkrumah expressed belief that in the coming months and years, Prof Frimpong-Boateng will reflect deeply on his own actions and comments, which have led to his challenges.
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