The New Patriotic Party (NPP) has defended the integrity of Environment Minister Professor Kwabena Frimpong Boateng dismissing calls by the Minority in Parliament for his arrest and prosecution.

Communications Director of the NPP and MP for Adentan, Yaw Buabeng Asamoah, says Prof. Boateng’s role in the illegal mining issue has been going hard on those engaged in the act.

The Minority has called for the arrest of the Environment Minister after he recently disclosed that most of the excavators that were seized from illegal miners have vanished. But the Adentan MP says their call is preposterous.  

According to him, the simple fact that the Minister himself had blown the whistle on the missing excavators shows that his integrity is still intact.

About 500 excavators were reported missing.

“It is important that we appreciate and realize that indeed a grave matter has happened but that grave matter happened because Professor Frimpong Boateng himself raised it.

“It was not as if someone else raised it for him. So Professor Frimpong Boateng’s integrity as far as that difficult office is concerned to me is intact,” he said.

According to him, measures have been put in place to retrieve the missing excavators and some suspected culprits including members of the ruling party have been arrested to aid investigations into the matter.

“As we speak, the excavators or some of the excavators have been found. And beyond that, people have been arrested.

“It is important that we appreciate the fact that people have been arrested and some of those people who have been arrested include ruling party members.”

However, according to the Minority, those members of the ruling party that had been arrested in connection with the missing excavators are ‘small fishes’ in the political game and thus their arrest does not tackle the issue at its roots.

The Communications Director of the NPP meanwhile says chasing after the size of the ‘fish’ is not the issue.

“Unfortunately, the minority can’t always have it their way. They can’t determine the size of the fish. The minority can’t determine who is a big fish and who is a small fish. Professor Frimpong Boateng has a mandate. The mandate is to move our small scale mining industry from artisanal illegal bases to artisanal legal bases.”

He added, “the president’s promise was that he was going to make sure that small scale mining was properly legalized and regulated. It is not a small matter. It is because there is a difficulty on the ground identifying what is legal and illegal.

“Anywhere it is legal sometimes the methods of operation and other things create the impression that it is illegal, so Prof Frimpong Boateng has the unenviable task of moving this industry which supports Ghanaians, from illegality to legality. It’s a process,” he said.

Mr Buabeng Asamoah has also dismissed comments in a tape circulating on social media linking the Environment Minister, NPP Chairman in Ashanti Region and NPP General Secretary to mining activities.

He says the Minister was only facilitating legal small scale mining and not illegal mining and that those mentioned in the tape have legal concessions.