Prof Kwabena Frimpong Boateng is one of the unfortunate ministers whom President Akufo Addo has refused to retain as part of his second-term administration.
The exact reasons why he was left out of the list of new ministers is unknown, but speculations are already rife that it may not be unrelated to his notorious reputation for using his position as the Minister of Environment Science and Technology (MEST) and a previous role as the Chairman of the Inter-Ministerial Committee on Illegal Mining (IMCIM) to facilitate his cronies and family to undertake illegal mining operations.
The activities that have left many forest covers and rivers in Ghana utterly destroyed have earned him scorn from the general public for a long time. But President Akufo Addo had continued to maintain him in that privileged position for four years, even when he was secretly recorded dishing out confiscated mining excavators to his party executives and some government ministers to engage in illegal mining also known as “Galamsey”.
It appears President Akufo Addo finally had enough of him and has replaced him with Dr. Kwaku Afriyie.
“The Galamsey Mugabe is gone forever!” Writes Dr. Solomon Owusu, a Colorado-based Ghanaian mining expert who had blown the whistle on Prof. Boateng’s illegal activities for several years now.
“When I heard that President Akufo Addo has sacked Prof. Frimpong-Boateng,…all I could say was Thank you, Jesus, may your holy name be praised,” Dr. Owusu wrote in a statement issued today.
“After conducting some fieldwork on galamsey in 2018 and realized that the Chairman of the Inter-Ministerial Committee on Illegal Mining (IMCIM) who doubled as the Minister for MEST was just deceiving the President and Ghanaians about the Galamsey fight, I began to crusade on his removal…Now that the ‘Galamsey Mugabe’ is gone, let’s hope that his successor will put pragmatic measures in place to ensure that small-scale mining is operated in an environmentally-friendly manner to create jobs,” wrote Dr. Owusu.
Frimpong Boateng’s exit is part of a house cleaning being undertaken by President Akufo Addo, who has been forced to cut down on his more than 112 Ministers-the biggest government size in the history of Ghana.
In all, President Akufo-Addo will appoint a total of 30 Ministers, and 16 Regional Ministers, bringing the total number of Ministers to 46. Eight of this number are women – six Ministers and two Regional Ministers.