Member of Parliament for South Dayi Constituency, Rockson-Nelson Dafeamekpor, has petitioned the Commission on Human Rights and Administrative Justice (CHRAJ) to investigate violations of fundamental human rights, alleged corrupt practices, issues of conflict of interest, and abuse of public office by certain public officials, and others cited in the Work of the Inter-Ministerial Committee on Illegal Mining (IMCIM) report.
Amongst other things, the petition filed by the MP’s lawyers also requests that the CHRAJ investigate allegations of corruption, conflict of interest, and abuse of office made by Charles Bissue, the former secretary of the IMCIM, against Professor Kwabena Frimpong-Boateng, the former chairman of the IMCIM and former Minister of Science, Environment, Technology, and Innovation in relation to some 500 excavators that allegedly went missing around February 2020.
The petition filed on April 25, 2023 available to Metro News indicated that the IMCIM report dated March 19, 2021, and confirmed to have been authored by Prof. Kwabena Frimpong-Boateng, cites various public officials and other individuals for corruption, conflict of interest, and abuse of public office.
The petition stated that “…the following findings of corruption, conflict of interest and abuse of public office were made: “On Monday 11th January 2021, the task force entered a concession at a location called Bepotenten we had been monitoring for some times. Residents in the area complained about harassment by Chinese miners. The damage to the forest reserve was unimaginable. Big economic trees had been felled and dumped into muddy water bodies to rot.”
“Huge pits were scattered over dozens of acres land. Near cocoa farms had been destroyed. Seven excavators were seized, As usual so[1]called big men started calling. First was Mr. Charles Owusu, who claimed ownership of the concession and of the excavators. This individual happens to be the Operations Manager of the Forestry Commission and there he was mining in a forest reserve without any permit and destroying forests, farm lands, water bodies and indeed the entire biodiversity.”
