The Ghana Immigration Service (GIS) says plans are underway to pay unpaid personnel, allowances from the service’s own coffers by end of this week.
390 Immigration officers have not being paid for 10 months after their passing out ceremony on August 16, 2013.
The situation is said to have angered the personnel who have not received their allowances.
According to the GIS this has made life difficult especially for those operating outside their home regions.
Head of Public Relations of the Service, Francis Palmdeti in an interview with Citi News said: “We as an institution with our limited resources have advanced some token to these officers”.
He explained that the allowance which will be GHC 1,000 and GHC 500 for senior and junior officers respectively is expected to be made available by middle of this week.
Mr. Palmdetti described the allowances as “tokens and are not adequate because they have been at post for the past ten months they go to work every day. They board vehicles, they have to pay rent, and they have to pay utilities”.
This is the second payment of allowance made by the Service to the officers due to the delay in payment by the government.
Mr. Palmdeti added that the allowances being given to the personnel will be paid back to the Service and “these advances we are making from within the service hopefully when they are paid then they would pay back to us so we use it to run other parts of our operations.”
He also charged the responsible stakeholders to do all they can to facilitate the payment of the arrears since “such a vulnerable situation it wouldn’t auger well for our national security.”
Mr. Palmdetti also appealed to the aggrieved personnel to exercise patience as all efforts are being made to settle all arrears owed them. “They should be rest assured it won’t be long this issue will be resolved and then they will be paid” he added.
By: Magdalene Larnyoh/citifmonline.com/Ghana