Gold Smuggling: It is frustrating that policy makers don't live by their words - ACEP

Benjamin Boakye has said that his organization, ACEP, and other civil society organizations in the country continue to face frustrations in the fight against corruption and illegalities, describing them as unending.

However, he has said that they will be unrelenting and continue to push until policies that will address the huge gaps of illegalities and corruption in the energy sector are curtailed.

The Executive Director of the Africa Center for Energy Policy added that some of the things that fuel their frustrations more stem from the fact that policy makers fail to live up to their words and assurances even after they sit at the table to discuss issues of interest with them.

“It is really frustrating especially where you sit at the table, you talk to policy makers about it. Sometimes they understand the challenges and they’ll tell you that this is something we have to work on, only to go to sleep on them and we keep working, we keep trying and we’re not getting the results. It gets worrisome but we have to keep trying to see how we can engineer policies that will work rightly. We’re not saying that we know it all but if we can engage to ensure that all outputs can be evaluated to arrive at a good decision, that would help," he explained.

Benjamin was answering a question on the news that up to $5 billion is lost annually through the illegal smuggling of gold and the fact that there is little accountability of same in the country.

He spoke on the Saturday, March 27, edition of JoyNews' news analysis program, Newsfile.