The aggrieved customers of Gold Coast Fund Management Company have suspended picketing at the Finance Ministry, pending the outcome of a meeting with officials of the Ministry.
The customers who spent an entire night at the premises of the Ministry on October 10, decided to take their protest a notch higher the next morning, demanding immediate response from the Ministry.
The aggrieved customers were seen banging on the gates of the Ministry, vowing not to allow any worker out of the premises, if no one attends to them.
Convener of the group, Charles Nyame, who led the charge said “no one is leaving there. We’ll sleep here today with them, because they don’t care, they have no sense of humility. We slept here; we spent 24 hours here. We don’t have any leader in this country to come and say anything.”
Their intense actions finally yielded a response as Minister of state at the Ministry. Dr Amin Adam in a meeting with the leadership of the group said “we will be inviting you for dialogue. As to whether you want to stay here or not it is your civic right, but we will wish that you will give way to dialogue. But if you want to do this side by side with this, it is like putting a gun on my head. That’s not how we dialogue.”
As the way forward, the leadership of the aggrieved customers will be meeting with the officials at the Finance Ministry at 12pm on October 12, 2023.
The Gold Coast Fund Management Company in November, 2019 had its license revoked by the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC). The company was among 53 others who had their licenses revoked for various infractions, including their inability to pay clients their investments.
The revocation, was however followed with a promise by the Director-General of the SEC, Rev. Ogbarmey Tetteh, to start payment of monies to customers when it completes the necessary validation processes.
In effect, an amount of GHC8.6 billion was approved by Parliament as a bailout package for the aggrieved customers. In November 2020, a partial amount of GHC3.1 billion was disbursed, with each customer receiving GHC50,000 each.
But four years down the line, members are still battling with government to receive their remaining monies which amounts to GHC5.5 billion.