Don't Kill Menzgold

The Securities and Exchanges Commission (SEC) Ghana, last week, ordered gold trading firm Menzgold to suspend all gold investments operations.

Menzgold complied and suspended operations for six days and it has been haywire since then for the company and the numerous investors in its businesses. The directive from SEC necessitated panic withdrawals across Menzgold offices across the country.

Most customers of the company have expressed their disgust at the directive of SEC and accused it of trying to kill an indigenous business.

Among those protesting the suspension of Menzgold's investment operations are The Coalition of Concerned Youth of Ghana (CCYG), a youth advocate group.

They claim if the regulators manage to collapse Menzgold, it will have a monumental effect on the Ghanaian economy.

In demonstration, which took place at Kasoa in the Central Region on Wednesday, 19 September 2018, and ended at the Oduponkwei Park where the group converged to relay its concerns to the government on issues relating to the recent SEC directive to Menzgold.

"Currently, when you move to look for a job as a youth, what they tell you is that try to be an entrepreneur and come up with your own idea and open a company and if these same young men will go to town and think about a serious innovation, come out with it and these same people that we use our tax money to pay them, sit at the Securities and Exchange Commission, they sit at the Bank of Ghana and their only concern is to collapse someone's business for their business to flourish, that is why we have come together and want to demonstrate and show the government that enough is enough", Vice President of the group, Benjamin Amuzu.

"You wouldn't open for anybody and when the youth come up with ideas, they try to kill the ideas which we think is not appropriate.'

Menzgold Demonstrators
'Let's look at the number of youth, young women and young men that are working under Menzgold. Quite recently, you've collapsed about three banks, are you thinking about the number of people that are working within that bank, how are they going to survive? How are they going to take care of their kids, wives and their parents? Mr Amuzu questioned.

"When you collapse Menzgold's business, how many people are going to sit at home, let's add the number to the number of those that were sacked from these banks or that are going to be losing their jobs and we are talking about 10,000 or 8,000 people."

'All we are saying is that open Menzgold; don't shut the company down or don't try to kill it or the brand of the company before maybe you go on the negotiation table.'