The communities in Atwima-Mponua district yesterday declared their support for a proposed investment into the vast deposits of bauxite in the district and traditional area by the Ashanti Bauxite Company.
The people of Atwima-Mponua have wholeheartedly welcomed the investment proposed by Ashanti Bauxite Company and see them as their strategic partner in the exploitation of the bauxite deposits in the Atwima-Mponua District.
As a result, they have appealed to the Lands and Forestry Parliamentary Sub-Committee, which is billed to ratify the Mining Lease Agreement signed on May 14, 2024 between the Government and Ashanti Bauxite Company to accept the deal.
The communities urged the lawmakers to ratify the Nyinahin Bauxite Lease when they sit today (September 3, 2024) to that effect. Dr. Peter Twum, one of the Conveners of the demonstration said the commencement of the bauxite project would create several jobs for the people of Atwima-Mponua and the adjoining communities and the country at large.
The Convener noted that the investment was the foundation for a rapid socio-economic development in their area, Asanteman and Ghana as a whole and that any parliamentarian who would oppose it was an “enemy of progress.”He explained that the land and the bauxite deposits belonged to the chiefs and people of Atwima-Mponua as their heritage and divine gift bequeathed them for this generation and future generations.
According to him, the benefits of their bauxite legacy would not manifest promptly without a big capital infusion from strategic investment partner hence the approval of the initiative of Ashanti Bauxite Company to exploit the bauxite deposits at Nyinahin and its surrounding areas bearing in mind the real and downstream benefits from such an investment.
Dr. Twum noted while foreign exchange revenues would accrue to the Central government, huge tax revenues would go into developmental projects in various sectors like education, health, infrastructure and amenities that would make Ghana a much better place.
Dr. Twum added that, Atwima-Mponua area and Ghana as a whole needed livelihoods and social interventions that would make the economy a middle-income one and that partnership with Ashanti Bauxite Company would be a blessing and thus help the people to be employed directly and indirectly as well as help Ghana to make quantum leaps in its economic development.
“We are assured that the Company would restore parts of the land so that the earth would remain productive into the future for our traditional agriculture and other forms of land use that continue after the mineral exploitation”, he noted.
Dr. Twum also hoped that a massive investment in the Atwima-Mponua District and nationwide in infrastructures like classrooms, science laboratories, computer laboratories, dormitories and hostels, and office blocks, and sanitation facilities in the education sector would serve as a catalyst and fuel for national development.
He said the investor had made undertakings to invest in the health sector in consonant with the company’s social responsibility.
Dr. Twum assured that the Ashanti Bauxite Company would liaise with the chiefs to provide the necessary interventions including compensations, resettlement packages and most acceptable strategies and actions to ensure the safety and comfort of all communities that would be “relocated” by the mining activities.
From Oswald Pius Freiku, Nyinahin
