Vice Presidential Candidate in the 2020 Elections Jacob Osei Yeboah (JOY) has slammed the Minister for Lands and Natural Resources, Samuel Abu Jinapor, saying he lacks the competence to fight illegal mining.

He has reiterated that the Minister and the people that President Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo has trusted to lead the galamsey fight are inept and lack the courage to take bold steps to fight the canker.

He acknowledges that President Akufo-Addo has a fantastic plan and the political will to stop illegal mining in the country but the problem has to do with the people he has entrusted power to execute the plan in stopping illegal mining activities.

The 2020 Independent Vice Presidential Candidate, speaking in an interview on Yen Sempa on Onua FM on Thursday, April 29 described the people President Akufo-Addo has entrusted power and relied on to fight galamsey as sycophants and toadies who seek their personal gains at the expense of the masses.

He expressed fret over the fact that the current minister is adopting the same pathway that terribly failed the government in 2017 in its attempt to fight illegal mining activities.

He stated emphatically that the 2017 policy designed by the government to curtail galamsey failed because of self-indulgence and greediness of the people who the president tasked to lead the fight.

JOY told host Kwame Tutu that he pities the president for not having competent and reliable people around him to help his vision for Ghana.

“Any time I look at the ministers he has appointed and the kind of people that the president has entrusted to work for him, I always pity him because he did not get good people with a good heart to help his government.”

The steps that the Minister has taken to stop illegal mining won’t work because the government in 2017 took the same step “and because of greediness, it did not work which I told them but because I am not part of them they did not listen”.

The two-time independent Presidential Candidate thus suggested to the Lands and Natural Resources Minister to rather engage the small-scale miners instead of involving the military in using force to fight the miners.

He wants the Minister to also engage the Metropolitan, Municipal and District Chief Executives (MMDCEs) and traditional rulers who are the custodians of lands at the local level to help regulate mining activities.