Minister for Inner city and Zongo Development, Mustapha Hamid has presented compensation packages to families of the 7 men killed wrongly by Police for robbery at Manso-Nkwanta in the Ashanti region.
This was done after a short ceremony held at the Kumasi Central mosque in the Ashanti region.
Mustapha Abdul Hamid while presenting the cheques to the families said:”…Yes we came from Accra purposely to fulfill a promise that President of the Republic, His Excellency President Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo made to the people of Ghana and also the families of seven of our Zongo youth who unfortunately lost their lives in the hands of Policemen and perhaps Police women last year. We’ve come to make a fulfillment of that promise, because it was here in Kumasi nearly two months ago that the President promised that in line with the recommendations of the committee that was set-up to look into this matter, each of the families will be compensated with an amount of GHS 250,000 each, and off course that compensation inasmuch as we did emphasize is not payment for life.”
He advised the gathering to eschew all forms of crime and delinquency from the Zongo communities saying if they’re able to wipe out ” illicit drugs, vigilantism, streetism and delinquency and so on from our zongo communities, I believe that in the future we will not anymore be talking about the illicit killing of people.”
On Tuesday, January 8, 2018, the government announced a GHS 1.75 million compensation will be given to the affected families.The announcement follows the findings of a seven-member government committee which established that the deceased were not armed robbers as was originally claimed by the police.The killing of seven on July 7, 2018, triggered outrage and anger in Zongo communities in Kumasi with residents insisting on the innocence of the seven.