Source: newsthemegh.com
One person has been killed in a shooting that broke out between residents of Sege in the Greater Accra Region and Electrochem Ghana Limited, a salt firm, about the Songhor Lagoon.
About twenty-five more people were hurt as well.
Some land guards employed to guard the Electrochem concession from unauthorized individuals who have been told to leave the region are suspected of spearheading the attack on the local resident.
According to reports, the armed land guard broke into the village of Toflokpo and began attacking residents without warning.
The villagers, who maintain that the Lagoon is their source of income and that they thus cannot give up the concession, also beat the DCE for the area to a pulp when he sought to step in.
Nene Mayilo Dadebom II, the head of Toflokpo, informed media outlets that they cannot be denied access to their decades-old source of income arbitrarily.
Electrochem denied hooting anyone, even though company acknowledged sending a task force to evict the people.
According to Nene Siada, the operations manager at Electrochem Ghana, she was on the field when suddenly there were noises coming from a large number of people from the community, as reported by Citi FM in Accra. We took care to safeguard both our workers and our equipment. Stones were thrown at us by the crowd.
“I heard Nene saying the police were shooting, but before man and God, there was no shooting. We were trying to protect our concession, and we have made announcements that they should move from that place. No one went there to shoot because our security guys don’t even use guns. We never shot a gun, not even a warning shot.”
“We gladly welcome any other person that wants to do salt business with us, and we have been given fifteen years to mine salt at Ada, and this thing went through the traditional authorities and Parliament, so this thing is legal. We have people who are doing illegal mining there. We have done over ninety-five community engagements,and we continue to do engagements. So I don’t understand why someone would say we’ve never engaged the community,” he added.