While the brouhaha on the demand by some former Members of Parliament(MPs) for ex gratia payments is yet to die down, it has emerged that Metropolitan, Municipal District Chief Executives (MMDCEs) of various district assemblies who served between 1997 and 2001 are also demanding for payments of their unpaid salaries and rent increases.
According to Professor Stephen Kwaku Asare, the MMDCEs have requested for the payments from the government as has been speculated by many.
“You guessed it —- DCEs of 1997-2001 have also put in their request for backpay salary and rent increase.
Ya y3 mobo dodo!!” He lamented.
News that former MPs who served between 2005-2009 had demanded for ex gratia payments to the tune of GHC 29.7 million emerged after the Auditor General Daniel Yaw Domelevo refused to verify the demand so that the payments could be done.
Many have accused the former MMDCEs of insensitivity especially in this time of a health pandemic that has made life difficult for many ordinary Ghanaians
Meanwhile, Founding President of policy think tank Imani Africa Franklin Cudjoe has advised President Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo not to pay Members of Parliament of Ghana’s Fourth Parliament who are demanding unpaid arrears to the tune of over GHC 29m, warning that paying the money could lead to his defeat in the upcoming elections.
Even though the Auditor-General Daniel Yaw Domelevo has stated that the MPs do not deserve the money and has therefore refused to verify their demand in order for them to be paid, the former MPs have been defending their demand, insisting that they rightfully earned the monies which remain outstanding.
But for Mr Cudjoe, the former MPs may be ‘conspiring’ with “jobless folks” to ensure that the Akufo-Addo administration becomes unpopular and gets voted out of power, enjoining the President not to authorize the payment of the money.
“Looks to me the former officials demanding the GHS 29m in this dire covid-deflated economy is a grand conspiracy with millions of jobless folks to say bye-bye to Nana Addo. Mr. President, you pay this money, you may be on your way out oo….don’t pay ooo…ayooo,” he wrote on social media.
Source:MyNewsGh.com/Stephen Zoure/2020
