We Pay You Big Taxes And You Have Still Burnt Our Excavators …NPP Women’s Organizer’s alleged Galamsey Company cries out

Xtra-Gold Resources Corp., the mining company in which the National Women’s Organizer of the ruling New Patriotic Party (NPP), Kate Gyamfuah serves as General Manager, has reacted to the recent torching of its mining machinery by the government’s anti-galamsey taskforce.

In a statement, the company accused the Akufo-Addo administration of biting the hand that feeds it, saying it has been faithful in paying the government huge sums of money in taxes.

“At the same time that we are paying all these huge taxes, the military is burning millions of dollars of our mining equipment,” the company bemoaned.

On Sunday, 16 May 2021, as part of an onslaught that the anti-galamsey taskforce had launched in galamsey at Larbikrom, Dompem and Pamen, all in the Atiwa District of the Eastern Region, Xtra-Gold Resources was heavily affected.

Reportedly, 8 excavators, four of which were said to be new ones acquired for US$120,000 each were set ablaze together with other mining machinery.

The development dominated the news because the company is linked to the NPP’s Women Organizer, confirming popular rumours that the government’s fight against illegal mining (galamsey) was doomed to failure because the perpetrators are kingpins in both the government and the ruling party.

But Xtra-Gold has denied being a galamsey company. It describes itself as a licensed gold exploration company focused on defining a potentially significant resource on its Kibi Gold Discovery located in the Republic of Ghana, West Africa.

The Kibi Gold Belt, it says exhibits many similar geological features to Ghana’s main gold belt (the Ashanti Belt with over 150 million oz’s of gold discovered), has been the subject of very limited modern exploration activity targeting lode gold deposits as virtually all past gold mining activity and exploration efforts focused on the extensive alluvial gold occurrences in many river valleys.

As a company, it says it has a substantial land position in the Kibi Gold Belt.

It said of the torching of its machinery, “These unlawful actions are a clear violation of the rule of law. We are socially responsible, and employ hundreds of local workers”, it added.