Parts of the rejuvenated plant
The people of Prestea, an ancient mining town in the Western Region, have praised government for making the rejuvenation of the Prestea Sankofa Gold Limited (PSGL) its topmost priority.
According to the residents, the contribution of PSGL to the Prestea local economy was enormous and that it shut down in 2014 stalled business and commercial activities in the once vibrant mining town.
Prestea Sankofa Gold Limited is a state-owned gold mining company established in 1994 to extract gold mainly from old tailings.
The company has not been operational since 2014 and several appeals by the residents on successive governments to help revive it were allegedly not adhered to.
However the current President, Nana Akufo-Addo, in his electioneering campaign in 2016, promised the people of Prestea that the company will resume production under the next NPP government.
So upon assumption of office, the President charged the majority shareholder, which is the Ghana National Petroleum Corporation (GNPC) – to constitute a committee to ensure the company was revived.
In 2018, the committee managed to ensure that the company started operation.
This came to light when DAILY GUIDE visited the company to confirm whether indeed the once defunct company has started operation.
Speaking in an interview, the Managing Director of PSGL, Justice Acquah noted that Prestea Sankofa Gold is the only mining company that is wholly owned and operated by Ghanaians without expatriate involvement.
He indicated that it was unfortunate that the company collapsed under an NDC regime and the government then did nothing to revive it.
“When the company collapsed, the NDC never put in any effort to make sure the company was revived but they wanted to sell it to an investor,” he revealed.
He told DAILY GUIDE that currently the company offers direct jobs to about 321 permanent and casual workers while over 1,000 people are also employed indirectly.
He admitted that the company was not out of the woods yet, adding, “What we do here basically is to process tailings.”
“We have our own concession which we call Bondai one and two. We also get tailings from small scale miners,” he explained.
He said another challenge was that currently there are other tailing processing plants springing up in the Western Region. “Until then, PSGL was the only tailing processing plant in Ghana.
“Now in Western Region for instance, there are five registered tailing processing companies competing with us. But because we are a state owned company, we always get the upper hand,” he noted.
He revealed that though the company was making profit, it has a lot of debts it needed to settle.
From Emmanuel Opoku, Prestea