According to the ranking member on parliament's Mines and Energy Committee, Adam Mutawakilu, the development agreement deal is very bad and won't help Ghanaians.
President Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo on Tuesday, January 22, re-opened the Anglogold Ashanti gold mine in Obuasi, which had been effectively closed since 2014, in fulfilment of a campaign pledge he made to the people of Obuasi on 15th July, 2016, in the run-up to the 2016 general elections.
He said upon his assumption of office, a series of discussions and negotiations took place, the end-result being the re-development project of the Obuasi mine.
"In order to help Anglogold Ashanti secure the needed investment for this project, Government had to provide a number of fiscal incentives, and guarantee the stability of the project against changes in the legal environment, especially in the early years of the mine’s operations," he added.
Following the re-opening of the gold mines, the Minority has criticised the government over the deal.
In an interview on Accra-based Class FM, Adam Mutawakilu said "The most critical thing that we should have asked is: 'What are we gaining from that development agreement?' That is very critical for everybody.
"We shouldn’t just concentrate on 'we have re-opened it' when in actual fact, the agreement is not [up to] that standard that we should boast about. You'll realise that technically they all avoided talking about the fiscal regimes. What does the government or the people of Ghana stand to gain from this development agreement?
"The Mine Workers Union raised issues with respect to what we call contract mining and that it will make the workers worse off and that the government should relook at it, but the government refused. So, the people who will be engaged will be far worse off than the old AngloGold."