Should All The Expatriate Staff Of Goldfields Limited Be Deported Immediately On National Security Grounds?

The fact that good leadership makes a huge difference to the prospects of all aspirational developing nations cannot be gainsaid.

Only good leadership - meaning leaders creative enough to commit to good governance principles because they actually care about the plight of ordinary people sufficiently enough to prioritise the fashioning of policies that empower the less privileged in society to successfully bootstrap their own way out of the poverty trap - is what will make a Ghana beyond foreign aid possible. Nothing else will do, alas.

The question is: What precisely is the nature of the society that those currently governing our nation desire to see emerging from their policies? Do they want Ghana to become an equitable society in which hard and honest work is always rewarded by a reformed system?

If this country continues to remain a dog-eat-dog society in which a powerful few with greedy ambitions - to paraphrase the great President Nkrumah - constantly exploit workers at every turn in their quest to increase their own personal net worth, at society's expense, in the long term Ghana will become an oligarchy cloaked as a democracy to enable wealthy-thieves-without-moral-compasses to steal our nation's resources by stealth, using our country's mostly unreliable and unprincipled political class to achieve that end.

That is a national disaster we must all prevent from occurring - for it will lead to instability fueled by dashed expectations and anger amongst the masses that the lawless elites who cock a snook at a nation in which the rule of law is said to prevail, almost always remain free - despite routinely breaking Ghana's laws with impunity.

That is why the government of President Akufo-Addo must not allow Goldfields Limited to treat its workers as mere production units to be disposed of in a drive to make a Tarkwa gold mine it openly admits - on its own globally-focused company website meant for it to communicate with shareholders and investors worldwide - is the company's lowest-cost gold producing asset globally, even more profitable.

If a Ghana beyond aid is to become a reality, private-sector companies such as Goldfields Limited must not be allowed to shirk their responsibilities to the workers that help them make stellar profits in our country.

For a Ghana beyond aid to materialise, only foreign investors who run ethical businesses that provide Ghana with the opportunity to improve the standard of living of working people - by rewarding productivity with generous wages and benefits - must be welcomed to our shores. Using contractors to avoid paying fair wages to a company' s workforce is in effect enriching a few well-connected entrepreneurs at the expense of Ghanaian workers. That is untenable. Full stop.

Goldfields Limited must not be allowed to shirk its responsibilities to its workforce by dumping them into the grasping and grubby hands of politically well-connected "contractors". And for lying so egregiously to Ghanaians and their government about the expected life of its Tarkwa gold mine, all the expatriate staff of Goldfields must have their work and resident permits revoked immediately and deported to their home countries on national security grounds. Haaba.