Customers of gold dealership company Menzgold Ghana Limited have threatened to stage another demonstration in Tarkwa on 19th February 2019.
This follows government’s failure to meet a three-day ultimatum for releasing details on the retrieval of customers’ locked up cash.
A spokesperson of the coalition of aggrieved customers, Samuel Odartey in an interview with Citi News indicated that the demonstration is expected to compel government to address their concerns.
“We have given government an ultimatum but it seems they are not heeding to our demands and so we want to do another nationwide demonstration in Tarkwa. We think this is a nationwide crisis so if the government is minded about what is happening to its citizens then it needs to say something about it.”
This is about the third time aggrieved Menzgold customers are staging a demonstration.
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 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.