"Special Assistants": Unconstitutional & Waste -Asamoah

A leading member of the National Democratic Congress (NDC) has attacked President J.A. Kufuor’s Administration as a mark of unconstitutional and a big waste on the country’s scarce resources by appointing special assistants for some Ministers of States who are more or less perform the same duties as deputy ministers.

He called on the President to abolish the appointments of special assistants because the current economic position of Ghana as a Highly Indebted Poor Country (HIPC) calls for prudent utilisation of our resources. The member, Nana Alex Asamoah, Western regional chairman of the NDC wanted to know which section of Ghana’s constitution allows for the appointment of personal assistants to Ministers.

“We cannot have a deputy minister who is constitutionally supposed to assist the substantive minister and turn round to appoint special assistants. In this vein, who is assisting the minister? Nana Asamoah asked.

The NDC kinpin made these observations during interaction with members of Western region press corp at Busua on Sunday, August 4, 2002.

Flanked by some executive members of the NDC in the region, Nana Asamoah asked that President Kufuor should make the clarification to Ghana since his government claims of upholding the tenets of transparency and rule of law.

He suggested that the President should fire either the deputy ministers or the special assistants, because the appointment of both amounts to duplication of responsibilities.

Speaking on the District Chief Executives who were supposedly cleared of financial malfeasance after auditing their accounts, Nana Samoa told the journalists that the so-called super-intensive auditing of the NDC DCEs was unfortunate because the NPP Government could not come out openly with the names of the 32 DCEs who were cleared.

He noted that even the names of the 32 DCEs purported to be cleared had not been written to or officially informed, but just a brief publication was made in the newspapers to inform them to contact the Chief of Staff for their End- of-Service Benefits.

He said it was quite pathetic that the NPP was pursuing a political vendetta without much fellow-feeling for such NDC past District Chief Executives.

He said it was long overdue since January 2001 to date when political power was constitutionally handed over to the NPP Government, yet payment of End-of-Service Benefits due those DCEs had not been done.

He pointed out that the sad bit of it all was that some of the DCEs had died, others were divorced and yet others are facing difficulties as a result of such unfair treatment meted out to them by the government.

He challenged the government to make public the names of the DCEs cleared so far.