The Ghana Mineworkers’ Union (GMWU) is not taking the Finance Ministry’s handling of their GH₵380 million locked-up funds lightly.
To express their disapproval, the union staged a protest on the principal streets of Accra on Thursday, marching to the Ministry of Finance and the Bank of Ghana to register its open disapproval of how government has handled the GH₵380 million belonging to over 19,000 miners still frozen inside distressed financial institutions.
According to the miners, some past comments from the Finance Minister himself amount to the government washing its hands of a problem it once promised to fix.
The Minister of Finance’s Comments
According to the petition presented to the Ministry, the Minister is reported to have said it is the Bank of Ghana’s job, as regulator, to recover assets from weak or insolvent institutions and use them to pay depositors, adding that “the Ministry of Finance has no money for that.”
Then, on July 24, 2026, the Minister reportedly went further, indicating government had no immediate plans to recapitalise Ghana’s struggling savings and loans companies.
For a union that has waited years for a resolution, the union says the statements landed as a retreat from commitments government itself had made. Leading the protest, the general secretary of the miner workers union, Abdul-Moomin Gbana, described the remarks as “deeply disappointing” and inconsistent with everything the Bank of Ghana and the IMF had previously acknowledged about the need for deliberate action and financial support to close out the clean-up exercise.
A Pattern of Broken Promises
The union’s disapproval and anger with the Ministry’s posture comes from a series of broken promises. It says it first raised this issue back in April 2021, meeting the Bank of Ghana’s Head of Banking Supervision, who assured them a solution was on the way. That assurance, the union says, was never honoured, not by the Bank of Ghana, and now, it seems, not by the Finance Ministry either.
In between, the union tracked a string of public commitments it felt entitled to rely on. It recounted the 2022 pledge to raise the matter with the IMF, a 2023 promise that resolution would follow the Debt Exchange Programme, and a March 2025 statement committing the Bank of Ghana and the Finance Ministry to jointly clean up the SDI sector.
Even the IMF’s own December 2024 country report acknowledged the government’s commitment to financial support where necessary. Against this backdrop, the Minister’s “no money” comments felt, to the union, like a complete reversal.
Tension Boils over at the Gates
This strong disapproval showed on the ground. When Ministry staff stepped out to receive the petition on the Minister’s behalf, the mineworkers refused to release it, insisting that only the Minister or his deputy was fit to accept a petition of this weight.
The standoff held until Deputy Finance Minister Thomas Ampem personally came out to receive the document.
The Human Impact of the Locked-up Funds
The union’s petition expressed the frustration and real hardship of the affected members. More than 19,000 mining and mining-related workers are affected, including retirees who cannot access their pensions, workers declared redundant whose severance packages remain out of reach, and widows and dependents struggling to pay for healthcare, education, and housing.
It is this suffering, the union says, that makes the Minister’s comments especially hard to accept.
Demands on the Table
Despite its anger, the union demands full and immediate repayment of all locked-up deposits held in distressed SDIs, including The Seed Funds Savings & Loans Limited (TSF) and Jislah Financial Services Limited (Jislah).
They also call for an urgent joint meeting with the Finance Minister and the Bank of Ghana Governor to resolve the matter once and for all; not through statements, but face to face.
The Warning
The union has, in its own words, worked hard since 2021 to hold back industrial action despite protests and strikes in mining communities from Ghana Manganese Company to Golden Star’s Bogoso/Prestea and Wassa mines.
But it warns that its disapproval of how the matter has been handled could soon translate into renewed unrest if government’s tone doesn’t shift from resignation to resolution. This risk could hit mineral production, government revenue, and investor confidence alike.
The petition now sits with the Deputy Minister awaiting action from both the ministry and the Bank of Ghana.
