Some aggrieved customers of Menzgold Ghana Limited are staging another demonstration in the Ashanti Region capital, Kumasi today [Tuesday]. The customers are currently burning tyres on the Tech-Adum road.
Despite signs that the company may not be able to conveniently pay them their locked up monies, the customers say their protest is to impress upon them to release the funds to them.
The demonstrators, numbering over one hundred have blocked access to Adum from Amakom and are demonstrating in front of the company’s Amakom office amidst burning of lorry tyres.
Previous efforts by the customers targeted at the company have failed to yield any positive results.
The spokesperson of the coalition of aggrieved customers of Menzgold, Francis Owusu in an earlier Citi Newsinterview said they also want to impress on other stakeholders in the country including President Akufo-Addo to intervene and assist them recover their investments.
“It is going to be one of the mega protests that has even happened in this country because all the Menzgold customers across the country will be coming to Kumasi to protest against the insensitivity of our president towards our plight. We have petitioned Otumfuo Osei Tutu II on this issue and we have been to his office for about three times so we are going to send a letter of reminder to Otumfuo’s office,” he said.
The customers have for the past six months, been demanding the payment of their principal investments after the gold dealership company was instructed by the Securities and Exchange Commission to halt their gold trading operations with the public.
Meanwhile, the police in the region has ordered the group to back down on their action because it is “illegal.”
Menzgold’s challenges
In 2018, Over two hundred customers of Menzgold besieged the premises of the company’s head office at Dzorwulu to demand payment of their locked up investments.
On December 19, some 100 retired and active Police Officers at the Kasoa Divisional Police Command in the Central Region also filed a writ at the Accra High Court against the company.
Menzgold was asked to suspend its gold trading operations with the public by the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC).
According to the SEC, Menzgold had been dealing in the purchase and deposit of gold collectables from the public and issuing contracts with guaranteed returns with clients, without a valid license from the Commission.
This, the SEC said was in contravention of “section 109 of Act 929 with consequences under section 2016 (I) of the same Act.”
The company was however cleared to continue its “other businesses of assaying, purchasing gold from small-scale miners and export of gold.”
Despite initial protests, Menzgold complied with the directive. It has however failed to fully pay its numerous aggrieved customers the value on their gold deposits as well as their entire investments.
MenzGold had 1.8m customers, including politicians with $2m and $3m deposits
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