A then secretary to the Inter-Ministerial Committee on Mining (IMCIM), Charles Onuawonto Bissue says Prof. Kwabena Frimpong-Boateng is not clean when it comes to matters of illegal mining.
Mr. Bissue, who was once under fire from a TigerEyePi exposé which cited him for using his office for extortion says Prof. Frimpong-Boateng knows he knows a lot about how unclean he is.
Reacting to some contents of a report submitted to the President on the IMCIM, authored by its Chairman, Prof. Kwabena Frimpong-Boateng, Mr. Bissue said he is surprised the report has become public after the Committee Chair was invited by the Criminals Investigation Department (CID) of the Ghana Police Service for probe.
“Prof. himself is not clean and he knows I know a lot. People like him should come out with the truth.
“…And then you’re made the Chairman of a committee, you only come out to speak when you’ve been actually directed to the CID to be investigated, this is where my problem is,” he told Alfred Ocansey Thursday, April 20, 2023, on TV3’s Ghana Tonight.
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When asked to explain what he knows that makes Prof. Frimpong-Boateng unclean, he said it is not everything he can say in the public.
Meanwhile, Mr. Bissue said he is privy to some of the facts contained in the report but has no knowledge of some.
“The facts are okay, it is not all of them…Even when the Anas exposé came out, Kweku Baako had the audacity to warn the president to be careful, these are things we have to look at because for me in the spirit of defending this country, I will always speak the truth and there are so many things that one day might come out but not to damage this country but individuals who seem to portray that they are protecting this country and are really not. So Prof, I am disappointed in him because he knew the whole truth about everything but he kept quiet,” he added.
Background
The IMCIM report submitted to President Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo in 2021 by Chairman Kwabena Frimpong-Boateng has come out with some wild revelations.
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According to the report, most ministers who were supposed to serve on the IMCIM abandoned the Committee.
The only ministers who remained a part of the Committee, according to Professor Kwabena Frimpong-Boateng’s report, were the Ministers of Sanitation and Local Government and Rural Development.
The Committee was set in March, 2017 by President Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo in the fight against illegal small-scale mining.
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Among the ministries which formed the Committee are Environment, Science, Technology and Innovation (MESTI), Lands and Natural Resources (MLNR), Local Government and Rural Development (MLGRD), Chieftaincy & Religious Affairs, Regional Re-Organisation and Development, Monitoring and Evaluation, Water and Sanitation, Interior, Defence and Information.
Among the tasks of the Committee was to sanitise and regularise small-scale mining activities in the various mining districts to ensure that miners work within legal framework.
But the Committee was dissolved shortly after the 2020 elections.
Committee Chairman Prof Frimpong-Boateng, who was Minister of Environment, Science, Technology and Innovation, accused some elements at the Jubilee House of hampering the efforts of the inter-ministerial committee.
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In his report, sighted by 3news.com, the respected heart surgeon listed abandonment of members as the first challenge his committee faced.
“Apart from the Ministers for Sanitation and Local Government and Rural Development, all the others abandoned the Committee,” he stated in the report, said to have been submitted on March 19, 2021.
“To make matters worse, the Chairman was personally attacked, vilified and framed for things he had not done.
“Such assaults came from many people, including some of the ministers who effectively left the committee.”
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He cited Information Minister, Kojo Oppong Nkrumah, and then Senior Minister, Yaw Osafo Mafo, as among ministers who deliberately worked against the committee.
By Felix Anim-Appau|Onuaonline.com
