No equipment of Mr Raymond Archer’s got destroyed in Sunday’s demolition of the Colour Planet Limited, the $10-million printing press factory belonging to the former Editor of the Enquirer newspaper, the Board Chairman of the Ghana International Trade Fair Company, Mr Dan McKorley (McDan) has revealed.
Following the demolition of his factory, Mr Archer told journalists: “We built a beautiful factory that employs over 120 workers, there are a lot of products we’re doing now that we’re the only factory in Africa that can do these kinds of works. So, to see our government target a business like this and break it down at mid-night is really unacceptable.
“We are citizens here. How do you destroy one’s business because you want to bring another person’s business using politics? If you destroy my business with politics, then what? If I also get power, I also break it down?
“Where did we go as a people? And this business has nothing to do with politics. In fact, when I was doing this business, I specifically not to do government projects purposely because I didn’t want the politics in my business. Every work we’re doing here is for private sector.
“So to target the business, [and say] ‘we’re government, you can’t fight the government…’; ‘I’m not here to fight the government; I’m here to earn a living and an honest one at that.”
But speaking on Metro TV’s Good Evening Ghana programme on Tuesday, 18 February 2020, Mr McKorley, who is also the CEO of McDan Shipping Company Limited, said: “May be, the time looked a bit fishy, people might think we have something to hide”, but added: “Nothing of Raymond Archer’s got destroyed. I have asked him to show pictures that one machine got broken. Nothing got broken. I have gone there to inspect the place, I called for pictures and I saw everything.
“Only the roof got ripped off and one small portion of the building ripped off. The printing machines were all there – intact. Nothing got destroyed”, Mr McKorley insisted.
Meanwhile, Mr Archer has said not even the National Democratic Congress (NDC), in its revolutionary days, would do such a thing.
“NDC was in power, and then they left and these guys [Akufo-Addo government] came; I don’t think that they [NDC government] would have done a thing like this”, Mr Archer told Kwabena Bobie Ansah on Accra100.5FM’s Citizen Show on Tuesday, 18 February 2020.
“I mean, even in the revolutionary times when we said things were that bad, they would still even use the court”, he said.
The former Enquirer newspaper editor, who earlier told the media in various interviews that he felt targeted by the government for destruction because of politics, told Bobie Ansah that: “I’ve been apolitical”.
“… To tell you the truth, in the last elections, I didn’t vote. But there is this perception that because of what you do and what you believe in, if you’re not for me, then you’re against me”, he said.
Asked if he thought his days with pro-NDC Radio Gold had anything to do with the demolition of his factory, Mr Archer responded: “I’m 100 per cent sure”.
In his view, “It should be possible for two decent people to think differently and belong differently”, explaining: “If you feel that I don’t belong to you, so be it but I think it is important that we have to agree and accept that two decent people can belong to two different sets or shades of opinion and still remain decent people and not be branded green or whatever”.
Asked if he believes in NDC, Mr Archer said: “Now, I do; yes, I do”.
According to him, “Human beings must belong to where they are valued and respected; don’t force yourself to belong to a place where people fear you, people don’t trust you, people don’t respect you, or even if they do, it’s because they want A or they want B”.
Source: classfmonline
