The Member of Parliament (MP) for Effutu, Alex Afenyo-Markin has joined angry calls by the opposition New Patriotic Party (NPP) to get the head of the National Disaster Management Organization (NADMO) out of office.
The is MP is unhappy that the NADMO boss is still occupying his position after weeks after his election as the National Chairman of the National Democratic Congress (NDC).
[contextly_sidebar id=”1IRIBH7CaeeAxRMvCN8kBbXcTdBAdfho”]“I will look at the constitution very well…we will look at the law and look at the appropriate ways of getting this matter resolved by the court,” he said.
There have been persistent calls on the President to dismiss Kofi Portuphy from his position as the Coordinator for the National Disaster Management Organization (NADMO).
Some of the members of the opposition described his continuous stay in office as unacceptable and the President’s refusal to address the matter portrays him as an “indecisive and incompetent” President.
The office of the President has remained silent on the matter and the NADMO boss is yet to respond to any of these pressures mounting on him.
In an interview on Eyewitness News on Friday, the Effutu MP said the persisting situation could be interpreted to mean the ruling NDC is hoping to benefit from NADMO in the 2016 general elections.
“Unless it’s a direct political decision of the ruling government and Mr. President to allow him to be there to divert donor items for release to their own political appointees and party people at the grassroot, then so be it,” he said.
According to him, during the campaigning period of the NDC ahead of the party’s national congress, there were allegations that Mr. Portuphy was distributing relief items such as rice, roofing sheets and cements to party supporters.
These allegations he claims, point to the fact that there is a likelihood that the NADMO boss will use donor items to support the campaign of the NDC in the lead up to the 2016 general elections.
“His own party people questioned his source of his resources for running his campaign and we are all aware that Mr. Portuphy was sharing roofing sheets, cement, rice and what have you.”
“If these allegations that came from his own party are anything to go by, the likelihood of conflict of interest repeating itself is there… The likelihood is that he is likely to use public funds and divert same for the political agenda of the NDC,” he added.
A very angry Afenyo-Markin remarked that Mr. Portuphy’s continuous stay in office “will send a very bad signal to the donor community…I do not see how both positions can be combined and I do not see how politically, it makes a lot of sense.”
He insisted that NADMO is part of the public service “therefore, for a national chairman to occupy that position and still think that he could run his political office duties, I’m afraid, it doesn’t add up.”
“It’s a blend of a moral argument, a political argument and it’s a constitutional matter,” he stressed.
But in response, the George Lawson, Deputy General Secretary of the NDC said: “People are just throwing words about…In the constitution, which bars Mr. Portuphy from becoming chairman of the NDC as well as Coordinator of NADMO?”
By: Efua Idan Osam/citifmonline.com/Ghana
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