By William
Yaw Owusu
Thursday
August 10, 2018
One of the members
of the Electoral Commission (EC) has come under intense pressure to come clean
on her actual age.
Hajia Sa-Adatu Maida
has been accused of reducing her age by three years, implying that under the
law, she is supposed to have gone on retirement in her capacity as a member of
the commission as at June 2018.
The woman, whose
father is said to be former National Democratic Congress (NDC) chairman in
Tamale, allegedly changed her age from her official records, claiming that she
is less than 60 years presently.
Probe Letter
The issue is being
raised by Maxwell Opoku-Agyemang, one of the lawyers for the EC staff, who triggered
Article 46 of the 1992 Constitution that led to the dismissal of EC Chairperson
Charlotte Osei.
The lawyer, through
a letter, reportedly enquired from Hajia Maida about her actual age, but the
commissioner is insisting that she has not attained the mandatory retirement
age of 60 which requires her to vacate her position at the EC.
According to
sources, the lawyer insists that Hajia Maida presented 5th June 1958
as her date of birth to the Social Security and National Insurance Trust
(SSNIT), which implies that she is currently 60 years and ought to retire from
the commission.
SSNIT Errors
However, the
commissioner is fighting back, saying her date of birth on her official records
is 5th June 1961 and supposedly accused SSNIT of not entering the
right date of birth in her records with them.
As a result, she has
written to SSNIT to correct the anomaly without delay.
“By letter dated the
23rd of July 2018, a copy of which is attached hereto together with
its attachments, Maxwell Opoku-Agyemang, Esq wrote to me requesting that I
retire from the Electoral Commission of Ghana on the basis that I attained the
age of 60 on the 5th day of June, 2018,” Hajia Maida reportedly wrote
in a letter dated July 31, 2018, to SSNIT.
She said in the
purported letter that “Mr. Opoku- Agyemang’s letter substantiated his call for
my retirement from the commission by reference to a document purported to have
emanated from the Social Security and National Insurance Trust described as my
statement as at July 24, 2018, in which document my date of birth is wrongly
recorded as the 5th day of June, 1958 instead of my true date of
birth, which is the 5th day of June 1961.”
Official Documents
“I must emphasise
that my true date of birth, which is the 5th day of June, 1961, is
recorded in all my official documents ranging from my birth certificate to my
passport and also reflected in other institutions where my personal details are
required and kept,” she explained in the letter to SSNIT.
It said “from the
document attached to Mr. Opoku-Agyemang’s letter, it’s plainly obvious that the
Trust got my personal details wrong, as it erroneously records my date of first
employment as the 1st day of January, 1900, which is about 61 years
before I was born and even at a time when the Trust, in its present form, was
not in existence. I contributed for 52 months in the year 1982. This clearly is
an impossibility.”
She, therefore,
asked SSNIT to “take steps to correct the records accordingly to reflect my
true and proper date of birth, as well as other errors on my statement, and have
attached a copy of my birth certificate for the necessary action.
Interestingly, her
purported birth certificate, which captures her true age, was procured on 31st
August, 2000.
Read about the
latest twist in the age drama in tomorrow’s DAILY GUIDE.
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