Electrochem Ghana In Fresh Trouble As Ada Citizens Mount Pressure On Govt
The granting of monopoly to the Electrochem Ghana to control the operations of salt production in the Ada Songor Lagoon has generated a difference of opinion between supporters and opponents of the project.
Joana Somiah 
Scores of aggrieved citizens in and around the Ada Songor Lagoon in the Greater Accra region have mounted pressure on the government to, urgently review the agreement which granted a monopoly to Electrochem Ghana to win salt in the Lagoon.
“A review of the terms of the Electrochem project and the implementation of a development approach in the vision of the Master Plan which legally accommodates the economic interests, including the right to salt production of local people,” the residents said.
Member of the Legal Team for the residents brutalized by the Police and Military in the Ada Songor Area, Wayoe Ghanamannti, at a press conference in Accra called for the immediate halt to the use of security personnel to intimidate the people in and around the Songor lagoon.
The granting of monopoly to the Electrochem Ghana to control the operations of salt production in the Ada Songor Lagoon has generated a difference of opinion between supporters and opponents of the project.
According to Mr Ghanamannti, the opponents of the project were arrested, brutalized and sustained various degrees of injury for defying the moratorium banning the community members from winning salt in the lagoon.
He said the most infamous incident was the killing of Maggie Kuwornu in May 1985, which set in motion a series of processes under the PNDC government and resulted in the development of the Master Plan and the passage of Ada-Songor Lagoon law, 1992(PNDC law 287).
The Plan was developed under the aegis of the Ministry of Lands and Natural Resources through a consultative process that involved the Songor communities and ASM Salt Producers and among others.
The Plan aimed to develop the maximum potential of Songhor Lagoon for the salt industry and reconcile the interests of the large scale and local small scale and cooperative salt producers and eliminate the contradictions that provoked conflicts among them.
Mr Ghanamannti said from the facts above, it was obvious that the use of the Military and the Police to brutalise and coerce the communities in the Songhor Lagoon was to put fear in them to forgo their economic rights and livelihoods dependent on the lagoon.
He asserted that the mining lease according to the people of Ada did not take into consideration the economic plight of the locals whose sole livelihood depended on the Songor lagoon.
Mr Ghanamannti noted that the locals claimed the lease would not only take away their source of livelihood but deprive them of their lands, adding that anytime they were ready to fight the lease to the latter, the government failed to heed their request.
Freeman Koryekpor Awlesu Greater Accra Regional Correspondent
