My degrees are not fake – SSNIT IT head

The interdicted Head of IT for the Social Security and National Insurance Trust (SSNIT) Dr. Caleb Afaglo has dismissed claims that his academic credentials are questionable.

The Economic and Organised Crimes Office (EOCO) has interdicted Mr. Afaglo over claims that his certificates are fake and therefore he does not deserve his position at SSNIT.

But responding to the charge in a Facebook conversation with Starr News’ Elvis Adjetey Monday, Mr. Afaglo said: “This is not my first job, so there is absolutely no truth in it right? None whatsoever. My Ph.D. University closed down in 2011, how is that my fault. And how does that make the degree a fake one when I graduated in 2007”.

According to Starr FM sources, Dr. Afaglo had indicated that he had a BSC and MBA from the Georgia Institute of Technology and a Ph.D. from the Kennedy Western University.

Prior to his appointment at SSNIT, Dr. Afaglo had worked as IT consultant for the Trust, National Pensions Regulatory Authority (NPRA), Ghana National Petroleum Corporation (GNPC), and at MTN Ghana and Action Chapel International as the Data Services Supervising Engineer.

Th qualification controversy comes after SSNIT is being slammed for purchasing a controversial OBS software at a cost $72million.

SSNIT settled for the $72 million OBS software to automate all the core processes in the administration of pension although it received tenders to undertake the project at much cheaper prices including $9 million.

A document on the deal indicates that the eventual winner of the contract bid produced a tender price of $27,610,792 but that was reviewed to 34, 011,914.21 after the General Services Manager of SSNIT identified arithmetic errors in the tender of the eventual winner, Perfect Business Systems, and Silverlake Consortium. Perfect Business Systems and Silverlake Consortium was chosen out of the total of 10 companies and joint venture responded to the tender by the October 19, 2011, deadline.

Perfect Business System’s $34million was almost nine times the amount presented by Persol Systems, about $4million.

Sambus Company Limited presented the second least bid price of $9.8 million. After the deal between SSNIT and Perfect Business Systems and Silverlake Consortium was sealed in 2012, the cost of the project increased by about $32million.

The increase was attributed to the procurement of additional equipment including servers and flash drives and headsets.