Member of Parliament for Bongo, Edward Abambire Bawa, has chastised former Senior Minster Yaw Osafo-Maafo over the justification he made for the deportation of Chinese galamsey kingpin, Aisha Huang in 2018.
According to the MP, Osafo-Maafo’s comment was disgraceful and was not representative of the quality leaders the country possessed.
Speaking in an interview with Accra-based Joy FM on September 5, the member of Parliament’s Mines and Energy Committee said foreign countries engaged in negotiations on mutual respect for rule of law.
He indicated that foreign countries such as China and the United States of America will not have countenanced any act which sought to be at variance with their rules and regulations.
Edward Bawa intimidated that despite grants from countries such as China which Osafo-Maafo used as justification for Aisha Huang’s deportation, the country still finds itself in an economic mess.
The legislator stressed that the country must at all times ensure that it had a good environment.
“There’s no price tag on the environment. Any time countries are engaged in negotiations whether, for financial support or what have you, it is still based on good morals. It is based on the rule of law. The fact that the government of Ghana was negotiating with China for some assistance was not an excuse to allow a lawbreaker to go scot-free.
“Is it the case that if today, we have a US citizen shooting our people in Ghana and because maybe now we are doing something with the IMF and the fact that the US will have an influence, other countries will have an influence so we will say that this person who is murdering people all over the place, we should say on the strength of that we should deport the person instead of making him go through that. Will China do that if the reverse was the case?
“With all this thing, are we not still in our economic crisis? Even if we cannot get food to eat, let’s have a very good environment. People like Aisha are the people destroying our environment to the extent that if we are not careful as the Ghana Water Company Limited said, we will start importing water and that tells you the implications of those things. The reasons that were given by Osafo Maafo and the government, not only is it disgraceful but I think that it is not a reflection of the quality of leaders that we have,” Edward Bawa said.
Aisha Huang was arrested yesterday for engaging in illegal mining. She was arrested with three others Johng Li Hua, Huang Jei and Huaid Hai Hun.
According to a Ghana News Agency report, she was arraigned before the court on Friday, September 2, 2022, and was slapped with charges of mining without a license, and engaging in the sale and purchase of minerals without a valid license.
She and her accomplices have since been remanded into police custody and are set to re-appear in court on September 14, 2022.
It will be recalled that Aisha Huang gained notoriety as an illegal mining kingpin in 2017.
She was arrested for the same conduct but later deported with the state discontinuing the trial against her.
Justifying why the state had to deport the Chinese national, the Former Senior Minister, Nana Yaw Osafo-Maafo, addressing some concerns of Ghanaians in the diaspora at a town hall meeting on April 18, 2019, revealed that, "Putting [Aisha Huang] in jail in Ghana is not going to solve your money problem. It is not going to make you happy or me happy."
"We have a very good relationship with China. The main company that is helping develop the infrastructure system in Ghana is Sinohydro; it is a Chinese Company. It is the one that is going to help process our bauxite and provide about $2 billion to us. So when there are these kinds of arrangements, there are other things behind the scenes. There are many other things beyond what we see in these matters, and everybody is wide awake. The most important thing is that we established regulations and we are protecting our environment. That is far more important than one Chinese woman who has been deported back to her country," he explained further,” he said.
On September 20, 2019, however, President Nana Akufo-Addo described the deportation of Miss Huang as a mistake in hindsight.
"I think the decision to deport Aisha Huang in hindsight was a mistake, and that is why that process and procedure is being stopped," he said at a forum at Princeton University during his visit to the United States of America.
Watch the latest episode of People & Places on GhanaWeb TV below:
DS/PEN
Former Senior Minister, Yaw Osafo-Maafo