Member of Parliament for Sekondi, Papa Owusu- Ankomah has described the revelations by the Bureau of National Investigation into the corruption in the National Service Scheme as shocking.
He argued that because the National Democratic Congress (NDC) government has praised itself for eliminating “ghost names” on the government payroll system, “so for the nation to be hit with this news is quite a shocker.”
His comments follows a recent exposé by the BNI which revealed the payment of GHC7.9 million to 22,612 non-existent national service personnel in more than 100 districts in July 2014.
The NSS boss, Alhaji Alhassan Imoro is also on record for trying to bribe the investigators with huge sums of money in order to cover up the rot.
Speaking on the Eye Witness News on Friday, Papa Owusu Ankoma said the case was a criminal matter and must not be swept under the carpet.
He also called for investigation into dealings of the Ministries, Department and agencies adding “I doubt if this will be an isolated case” and further calling for an immediate investigation into the entire government payroll system to have the loopholes checked.
“I’m hoping that this will lead the way to a more thorough investigation of our payroll in respect to the public sector generally. Am sure it’s quite pervasive and this may well be a gist of the iceberg,” he said.
The Governing Board of the Ghana National Service Scheme has directed the Executive Director of the Scheme, Alhaji Alhassan Imoro and all indicted executives to step down to pave way for further investigations.
Meanwhile, the Programmes and Research Officer at the Ghana Integrity Initiative, Mary Awelana Addah has commended the NSS board for taking such a swift decision.
“We are very happy that action has been taken so swiftly on that. It is very important that when people are incriminated, we allow processes to flow without the people being in place to influence the process, so we are commending the board and also commending the Ghana Education Service under which the National Service Scheme operates for acting on this and making people to begin to trust that the fight against corruption is not a lost cause after all,” she said.
–
By: Godwin Allotey Akweiteh/citifmonline.com/Ghana