In response to critics who questioned why former CEO of the Ghana National Petroleum Corporation (GNPC), Tsatsu Tsikata, is being paid his ex-gratia, 14 years after leaving office, he [Mr Tsikata] said fighting to gain his freedom from the “persecution’ under the Kufuor administration in 2001, was far more important to him than pushing for his financial entitlements with the company.
According to him, it had also become clear to him at the time that the New Patriotic Party (NPP) administration had clearly decided not to grant him those entitlements.
This was Mr. Tsikata’s response when Richard Dela Sky, host of Citi FM’s Eyewitness News, asked him on the Point Blank segment, on why he did not push enough to get his end of service benefits years ago.
[contextly_sidebar id=”80sRq55tLsg3jzJziHR7B48WsK32RUvb”]“I was being chased even to church in order to be arrested in 2001, I was the subject of an intense period of being harassed, in terms of my rights, and in the case of the entitlement it was such an obvious thing that they were not to be respected. There had been very high-level decisions that those rights should not be respected. The right to freedom was a right that had to be protected for me to be able to secure other rights in the environment of the time.” he noted.
Mr. Tsikata has sued former Deputy Energy Minister, K.T. Hammond, at the High Court for defamation for claiming in a radio interview that he [Tsatsu Tsikata] had been paid an ex-gratia of Ghc 1million for his twelve-year service at the GNPC.
Mr. Tsikata, who was removed from office following allegations of fraud and mismanagement, has however justified why he deserves to be paid the ex-gratia, explaining that “after twelve years of service as the GNPC CEO, even salary payments during a period when I was on leave in 2001, were not made to me.”
“My entitlements to the Provident Fund were never paid – not even my own contributions. No end of service benefits of any sort was ever paid. A letter I wrote to the Chairman of the board of directors at the time was not answered,” he noted.
GNPC announced recently that its board has approved end of service payments for Mr. Tsatsu Tsikata, former Public Affairs Manager Esther Cobbah, Benjamin Dagadu (Field Evaluation and Development Manager) and Nana Boakye Asafo-Adjaye (Ag. Chief Executive).
But the GNPC says only one of the four has been paid so far.
Parliament’s Select Committee on Mines and Energy in Parliament, has since demanded documents from the GNPC on the payments, to get clarity on the matter for the necessary recommendations to be made.
By: Ebenezer Afanyi Dadzie/citifmonline.com/Ghana