Mindboggling Impunity

 

The level of impunity in some aspects of our national life is beginning to smack of governance failure.

The seeming failure is impacting negatively on our desired destination of national progress. We cannot reach this destination when impunity is no longer being confronted with the powers of state at the disposal of the President for application when it becomes necessary, of course not arbitrarily but with a sense of fairness and justice.

Even as Ghanaians are yet to come to terms with the most devastating flood ever to hit the nation’s capital in living memory, illegal miners have taken their foolhardiness to the general vicinity of the Adansi Asokwa District Assembly and the district police command – they are digging for gold.

Their devious occupation is threatening the waiting- for- commissioning completed Adansi Asokwa Agenda 111 hospital. Perhaps government’s refusal to commission the project has emboldened the illegal miners to that daring. The toxic chemicals they use for their killer occupation has the capacity to sip through the hospital’s environment as it were, the fallouts of which is unknown.

The level of impunity being exuded by the illegal miners provided the impetus for the story to make it to the front burners of the media last week. If there is anything to prove failure of government in the galamsey war, this is it.

An Assemblyman’s comment when the story broke out speaks volumes about the lip-service being showed by government in tackling the illegality. According to him, the illegal miners are emboldened by the President’s word when he was in opposition and campaigning in the gold-bearing areas. He recalled the then opposition leader assuring illegal miners or galamseyers that when he wins political power in the coming elections, they can go ahead with their occupation without fear, and those in jail for undertaking the illegality released from jail.

We find it preposterous that this illegality can be taking place under the nose of the District Police Command and the Adansi Asokwa District Assembly.

The District Chief Executive (DCE), who by virtue of his position heads the District Security Council, has turned blind eyes to the illegality. This prompts questions as to whether he is benefitting from the illegality by having on his roll assigns working on his behalf.

The District Police Commander cannot claim ignorance of the illegality unless he wants us to believe that he is incompetent and, therefore, oblivious to one of Ghana’s most despised environmental illegality taking place very close to his office.

The DCE’s continued stay in office would suggest that his indifference to the illegality has a backing of his sector minister or someone high up on the power hierarchy.

Cry our beloved Ghana.

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