A member of the National Democratic Congress (NDC) communications team, Alhaji Haruna Halidu, says it is unfair for the state to prosecute its own citizens over petty crimes and free foreigners over grievous ones.

The La District and Motor Court reportedly sentenced one Kwame Akyere to two months imprisonment for littering the Central Business District (CBD) of Accra.

The conviction of Mr. Akyere came only a few days after the Senior Minister, Yaw Osafo Maafo, disclosed that the state discontinued a case of illegal mining against Chinese national Aisha Huang because of Ghana’s diplomatic relations with China.

Yaw Osafo Maafo, while addressing a town hall in the US, had said jailing Aisha Huang would not have made either Ghanaians or the government happy.

This prompted the NDC communicator, who was contributing to a discussion on TV3’s New Day to question if the prosecution and conviction of Mr. Akyere makes the government happy.

“If prosecuting crimes will not make you happy and that serves as a basis to let a foreigner out of this country and your own citizen just littering, you are prosecuting them, does that make you happy as a government?” he asked.

According to him, the laws of the country must be allowed to work free and fairly without any form of discrimination.

“We must make sure that laws are made to be respected when anybody or any citizen flouts the law. That is why we have law enforcement agencies and is expected that anytime it happens that the law has been flouted we must go through due process and deal with the matter.

“So, I have no difficulty with these steps taken by our MMDAs, but emphasis must be made that we do this to our own citizens but we let go the foreigner because the foreigner holds the purse and we advocate for Ghana Beyond Aid, it is strange.”

Mr. Halidu acknowledged that sanitation needs to be taken more seriously in the country and was worried the GH? 200 million earmarked by the government for sanitation is rather on the high side.