Gold Coast Fund Management customers vow to block Finance Ministry workers from going home

Aggrieved customers of the collapsed Gold Coast Fund Management Company who are currently picketing the Finance Ministry have vowed to hold every staff of the ministry hostage to ensure they don’t leave after work for their various homes.

The picketers spent the night on Tuesday, October 10, 2023, on the premises of the Ministry of Finance as part of a 48-hour protest to demand their locked-up funds.

The group had picketed the premises of the SEC for three days in May this year for the same purpose, but that did not yield the desired result, hence the latest protest action. They say the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), has not paid their locked locked-up funds although an amount of GH¢8.6 billion was approved by Parliament to settle them.

According to the Convener of the group, Charles Nyame, over 55,000 customers’ funds were locked up before the regulator revoked the license of the defunct Gold Coast Fund Management Company, which operated under the registered name, Black Shield Capital Limited.

The group said it has been four years since their investments were locked up and they can’t wait any longer.

“The lock-up of our investments was mainly due to the Government’s policy of a Financial Sector Clean-up Exercise in Ghana initiated in 2018,” the group said in a statement.

The group argued that despite assurances that its members would be paid their investments, that has not happened.

The protestors have lamented that since the beginning of their picketing yesterday, no official of the Finance Ministry has had any discussion with them, instead they have been passing them by as if they were not noticeable.

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