Presidential Staffer and Western Regional Secretary of the governing New Patriotic Party, Charles Bissue has debunked former President, John Dramani Mahama’s claim about the illegitimate seizure of mining concessions by the NPP government.

“Nobody’s concession was taken wrongly. You go through processes to acquire a concession. So once you go through the processes to acquire legal concessions, if anybody takes it from you, you can take it to court. And that you can sue the person.” he told Kwame Danso Acheampong on the Hot Seat on Starr 103.5 FM.

According to him, the sanitization undertaken by the government did not occur in a vacuum, saying vetting of the documentations was necessary to clean up the mining sector.

“Out of our research, we realized that one license owns about two or three concessions. That is why the vetting was done,” he noted.

National Democratic Congress’ Flagbearer, John Dramani Mahama has guaranteed his government will see to the return of confiscated mining licenses, concessions, and excavators to small scale miners should he be voted back into office.

John Mahama speaking at the launch of the NDC’s 2020 Manifesto at the University of Professional Studies, Accra (UPSA), stated that the move would promote legal and properly regulated and operated medium and small scale mining in the country.

“We will reissue confiscated legitimate mining licenses to miners. For persons whose mining concessions have been illegitimately seized, we shall return the concessions to the legitimate owners. We will track down and take back all excavators that are missing and we will return the excavators to their rightful owners.”

But Bissue, a former Secretary to the Inter-Ministerial Committee on Illegal Mining in a reaction said the former leader, is just playing on people’s conscience just to win votes.

“All the things that President Mahama is saying now, if he hadn’t been President before then I will be thinking that he might be bringing something fresh,…”