Political parties have been urged by the Ada Traditional Council to stay away from Ada Songor Lagoon development and to provide locals with the space they need to successfully change the lagoon and the surrounding area in peace and harmony.
The Ada Songor Lagoon Association (ASLA) and other developing groups' actions, in the opinion of the Traditional Council, are a direct result of political pressure to act in ways that threaten the traditional Ada governance structure.
The petition that was presented at the rally and claimed to represent Adali's views was signed by a well-known political party propagandist rather than the chiefs, who are the traditional leaders, as "evidence of such involvement."
The Ada Traditional Council was responding to concerns over Electrochem Ghana Limited's (EGL) operations at the Songor Lagoon for Commercial Salt Mining and the ASLA demonstration in Accra.
The Council claims that the organization is becoming unmanageable and that threats and resistance are ineffective when talks, lobbying, and other strategies are available.
In order to get some facts straight, the Traditional Council stated that ASLA did not exist when EGL was granted a mining license, despite the term becoming associated with resistance to the Chiefs and the Investor.
"A location for local salt production, known and dubbed the DESPA region, has been allotted to the sole recognized group that was engaged in local salt production and operated under the name DESPA. Despite this, the ATC is committed to meeting the needs and aspirations of its whole population, and it has engaged in several interactions with ASLA, including with some assistance from the Tema Regional Police Command.
The Traditional Council asserted in a statement that they must deal with the idea that the government's grant of the entire lagoon to EGL created a monopoly in the production of salt in Ada and that "we know that the locals want more space and participation in salt production. If you employ many commercial manufacturers, how much room would be left for the locals if they needed a large place for their production? The ATC believes that having fewer operators is a preferable choice to having an arrangement that would provide locals with greater room.
In accordance with that plan, EGL is building community pans for more than thirty villages bordering the lagoon at no expense to the communities and, once again, has been supplying free brine for regional salt production, according to the statement. The ATC has to engage with the investor to agree to the Community Pans idea.
"These communities would only need to harvest the salt that has already been produced for them at no cost in the areas where EGL is fully operational as of right now," These settlements, which include Nakomkope, Adjumanikope, and Agbedrafor, had their own community pans and were actively mining salt from them. The settlements of Bonikope, Toflokpo, and Kposem are nearing completion.
It was highlighted that the introduction of these community pans would coincide with the extension of EGL activities to all communities and that they would provide the communities now using their community pans with the chance to share their own narratives.
It also detailed the gentleman's agreement the Traditional Council had with the investor, which stipulated that 12,423 acres of the overall concession would be operated for 50 years before being renewed for another 25 years.
"However, the government, in its infinite wisdom, lawfully granted the investor a 15-year concession over a total of 41,000 acres.
blogpay
Total Comments: 0