Affected customers deny Akufo-Addo’s claim that 98% of locked up funds have been paid

An association for the millions of affected customers of collapsed Savings and Loans institutions has said a claim by President Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo that 98% of locked up funds have been paid is false.

Quoting figures from the Bank of Ghana, the leader for the Association of Affected Customers of Savings and Loans Institutions, Ezekiel Annor, said only about 297,000 of 3.3 million people affected by the revocation of licenses of these financial institutions have been paid.

This figure, he stressed, represent less than 10% of the total number of affected customers and way lower than the 98% the President announced.

Mr Ezekiel told Accra-based Joy FM that when many of the affected people submitted their claims, they were told that their names could not be found in the system during validation.

“We sense a deliberate attempt that about 87% of our people are going to be denied payments,” he said.

President Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo disclosed last week that 98% of the depositors of the microfinance and savings and loans companies have received their monies.

"98%, all those whose savings were in the banks, all those savings have been refunded and paid to the people and in fact, the intervention of the central bank was to protect the savings because many of the banks that went into receivership were about to collapse, their situation was dire and even if we have allowed [them] to collapse all those deposits would have gone up in smoke," President Akufo-Addo told Koforidua-based Sunrise FM during his Eastern Regional tour on Tuesday.



The President continued: “As far as microfinance and savings and loans and institutions are concerned 98% of the deposits and the funds have also been paid, there is still a balance. The receivers and others are working on it and I believe Nana Nipah has made it known that by the end of August, all of them would have been paid.”

The comment by the President followed a promise by the presidential candidate of the opposition Nationl Democratic Congress (NDC), John Dramani Mahama, to pay all depositors their locked up funds if he wins the December polls.