Former Member of Parliament for La Dadekotopon, Nii Amasa Namoale has slammed the first Deputy Speaker of Parliament, Joe Osei Owusu, for proposing the shooting of illegal miners (galamseyers) as an effective way of dealing with the illegal mining menace.

The anti-galamsey task force, Operation Vanguard, recently expressed unhappiness about what it said was the courts leniency in dealing with illegal miners brought before them.

According to the Commander of the task force, Colonel Michael Amoah Ayisi, if the situation lingers, illegal miners and their financiers will be motivated to act with impunity.

The task force since its composition last year has arrested some 983 illegal miners, violating the government’s ban on small-scale mining. Twelve Chinese and four Burkinabes are among those arrested by the eight-month-old operation.

Only 95 suspects from the 983, representing less than 10% have been convicted.

The First Deputy Speaker Hon. Osei Owusu told Starr News that prescribed that the only viable way to clamp down on the menace is to be ruthless.

“The other time I said we should shoot people and people were not happy with that. [But] I still think that the way to deal with recalcitrant people is not to use the regular law system,” he proposed.

But speaking on Anopa Kasapa on Kasapa FM Thursday, Nii Amasa Namoale expressed disappointment in Hon. Joe Osei Owusu who he described as a level headed person saying he least expected such pronouncement from the latter.

He said;“When the NPP was looking for their votes in the run up to the 2016 election, they went and told the galamseyers that it is not true that the party will clamp them down if the party won power but will rather support their work. They got thousands of these illegal miners to campaign for them and they won elections".

"After winning power, a whole deputy Speaker and leading member of the NPP, is now urging that they should be short. What a way to stab the galamseyers in their back. It is only a judge who can order for someone to be killed. We’re not in a revolutionary period, but a deputy Speaker wants people to be killed in a democratic dispensation. This is shocking, so unbelievable", he added.