Lands Minister, Samuel Abu Jinapor, has called on Ghanaians to unite to back government for industrialisation purposes.
According to the Minister, industrialisation will help build Ghana Beyond Aid as propounded by President Nana Akufo–Addo.
The Minister stated at Nakomkorpe, a suburb of Sege, during a working tour of the Greater Accra Region, which took him to Ada Songor Lagoon where Electrochem Ghana Limited, a salt mining company under the McDan Group of Companies, was carrying out its operations.
In his speech after touring the project site, the Lands Minister noted that the future of the project was promising and would contribute to the economic growth of the Ada, Greater Accra Region and Ghana at large.
“What I have seen today shows clearly that when we put our minds together on any project, we ourselves as Ghanaians can build our country. When I had the privilege of being a Minister for Lands and Natural resources, I was fully briefed about the operations of Electrochem Ghana Limited,” he said.
“As Lands Minister, “White Gold” (salt) is part, I highly commend Dr Daniel McCauley for this excellent work done and for literally transforming this resource which has been abandoned for the past 40 years and today as we can all see, there have been enormous investment into the exploitation of this resource.
“We are going to see a lot of linkages, out of this operations and efforts by Mr McDan. I, therefore, congratulate McDan for the excellent work done,” the Lands Minister stated.
Mr McCauley, popularly known as McDan, the CEO of McDan Group of Companies, which Electrochem Ghana Limited forms part said, the project was for the people of Ada.
“I am just serving as Moses in the Bible who led the Israelites to the promised land”.
According to him, the project was aimed at becoming the first in Africa in the space of two years and fifth in the whole world in five years and called on the people of Ada to support the project.
In a speech delivered on his behalf, Nene Abram Kabu Akuaku III, Paramount Chief, Ada Traditional Area, commended McDan for the transformation of the site and some corporate social responsibility roles they played so far.
Nene Agudey Obichere III, who delivered the speech on behalf of the Paramount Chief, said the construction of the Astroturf, underway had proven that Mr McDan was a man of his words and called on the management of EGL to add a representative of the Traditional Leaders on its Board of Directors as part of negotiations made.
He also appealed to the Minister to work on some royalties, which were supposed to be given to the Ada Traditional Authority in the previous administrations.
“Already we have so many of our sons and daughters being employed by Electrochem; we also have free water distributed to some of our communities all by Electrochem Ghana Limited.
“We know that the community pans are taking time because of engineering problems, but we are hoping that early next year, the people will begin mining salt from the community pans.
“We want to plead with the Minister that the previous royalties that are on their table, he should try and work on it for us,” he said.
