By William
Yaw Owusu
Friday December
15, 2017
The lady at the centre of ejection allegation has
said she was not involved in the operation by certain security personnel that
threw out the belongings of some government workers staying in state bungalows
in Accra.
Mrs. Grace
Acheampong, a Protocol Officer in charge of housing at the office of the Chief
of Staff, said she is being accused wrongly by the affected worker Abdulai
Amin, a staff of the Accountant-General's Department and added that officials at
the Ministry of Works and Housing were not being fair to her in the matter.
Narrating what triggered the issue, she told DAILY
GUIDE that the Chief of Staff Frema Osei Opare put her in charge of
estates and was supposed to liaise with the sector ministry headed by Lawyer
Samuel Atta Akyea to track all government bungalows and flats in the Greater
Accra Region.
She said she was also tasked to find accommodation
for staff working at the presidency and as a result her team has been working
since January to make sure all government bungalows in the region are intact.
According to Mrs Acheampong popularly calle O’gre, the
process they adopted was that “a tenant-update form was designed and was signed
by the Hon. Minister Atta Akyea and subsequently distributed to tenants in all
the bungalows and flats visited, to be filled,” adding “the audit team went to
all the areas in the region captured to administer the forms and then went back
two weeks after administering them to collect the completed forms.”
“Tenants who could not submit their completed form
to the team on the third and fourth visits were asked to submit them at room
56’ of the Ministry of Works and Housing,” she said.
According to the staffer, the tenants were requested
to attach photocopies of their allocation letter, pay slip/rent payment receipts
and appointment letter and based on the information provided “the team sorted
and classified them into Defaulters, Non-Defaulters and Retired Tenants.”
She said that defaulting tenants were those who were
not paying rent, or not being deducted rent at source according to their pay
slips, or could not attach rent payment receipt from the Bank of Ghana and
could not also prove an exemption of rent payments in their conditions of
service.
“There are tenants who have attained the age of
statutory retirement (sixty (60) years) but are still occupying the bungalows
whilst some have even passed them onto their children,” she noted.
Mrs. Acheampong said the payment process was that the
Controller and Accountant General’s Department (CAGD) was supposed to do the
rent deductions while in some category of government workers, they were
supposed to go to the Bank of Ghana to make the monthly payments since they
were not receiving their salaries through the Controller.
According to her, the data they collated showed that
65% of government workers were living in the various government bungalows and
flats free of charge because they do not pay rent.
She said in the case of Amin, the records showed
that he was employed at Controller and Accountant General's Dept in 2013 and he
moved into the property the same year, adding that he had not paid rent since
2013.
“He rushed to pay an amount of GH¢625 at the BoG in
August this year when he realized he was being found out. My team gave all these
information to the ministry,” adding “he came to me begging me for time and
turned around to accuse me of ordering the security agents to eject him.”
“I did not ask the security personnel to go and
eject him. I only passed the information I gathered on him and others to the
ministry for action. I don’t have that power to order security personnel
about.”
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