Stop being lawless, you have no power to block salaries of teachers – Amidu descends on Kissi Agyebeng

Former Special Prosecutor, Martin Amidu, has launched another attack on his successor, Kissi Agyebeng, for supposedly blocking the salaries of some government teachers.

Teacher unions in the country, including the Ghana National Association of Teachers (GNAT), National Association of Graduate Teachers (NAGRAT) and the Coalition of Concerned Teachers, accused the Office of the Special Prosecutor (OSP) of withholding the salaries of over one thousand teachers.

The unions gave the OSP a 72-hour ultimatum to release the salaries of their members or face their fury.

Reacting to this in a statement copied to GhanaWeb, Martin Amidu, a former Minister of Justice and Attorney General, said he is fully behind the teacher unions’ demand for the OSP to release the salaries of the affected teachers.

According to him, the blocking of salaries by the Special Prosecutor, Kissi Agyebeng, is illegal because no law gives the OSP the power to do so.

“First and foremost, Kissi Agyebeng, the Special Prosecutor has no mandate under the Office of the Special Prosecutor Act, 2017 (Act 959) to suspend the payment of salaries of teachers in any region of Ghana without those multitude of teachers not being under suspicion of a specified corruption or corruption-related offence falling under one of the offences defined under Section 79 of Act 959.

“Kissi Agyebeng has run amok with this lawlessness of using lawless officers of the OSP to intimidate ordinary working citizens struggling to earn a living to look after their hungry families and themselves within the current economic mess brought upon Ghanaians unwillingly by the mismanagement and corruption in the body politic,” the former attorney general wrote.

He also said that the special prosecutor has no moral authority to investigate the payroll of the teacher unions, accusing him of engaging in acts of corruption in his office.

“Secondly, there is more than abundant evidence to demonstrate that the payroll system of the OSP suffers from identified criminal infractions than any other payroll of any public institution in Ghana due to the direct abuse of public office for private profit, and corruption by public officers in the OSP. Consequently, Kissi Agyebeng who is overseeing the loot of the public purse in the OSP through the OSP’s payroll system and other public resources has no legal or moral right to suspend the salaries of already suffering teachers or any category of Ghanaian workers without any authority from a court of law,” he said.

Amidu also accused the special prosecutor of abusing his power and engaging in lawless acts since he took office.

BAI/DO

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