Victimised? 871 NFED Workers Face The Sack

In what workers describe as a massive victimization exercise, 871 supervisors from all the ten regions of Ghana are being sent home at the end of this month.

A letter signed by Mr. Samuel Salifu Mogre, Director of the Non-Formal Education Division (NFED) and dated September 7, 2004 said the retrenchment exercise has become necessary as a restructure exercise.

A study conducted on the current staffing of the organisation revealed that some names appearing in the supervisor grade list of the organisation as zonal supervisors were unjustified because they lack the minimum educational qualification essential for appointment to that grade.

?To correct the anomaly, an advert was placed in ?The Ghanaian Times? and ?Daily Graphic? newspapers of January 23, 2004 inviting applications for appointment to ?zonal supervisor? status in the organisation. ?That advert spelt out the minimum entry qualification for the post, and was open to all qualified applicants including those who were already on the pay roll of the organisation as zonal supervisors. ?All qualified applicants were interviewed, and the successful ones have been issued with appointment letters.?

Workers of the NFED who spoke to The Insight on condition of anonymity said they feared that they were being replaced by activists of the New Patriotic Party (NPP) as happened at the National Mobilization Programme (NMP). They claimed that it was strange that qualified zonal supervisors already at post requested to reapply for their jobs. The leader of the workers said, ?The lack of educational qualification is only a pretext for getting rid of us because we were employed in the NDC era and they suspect that we are sympathisers of the NDC.

?If indeed, they wanted to get rid of those who were not qualified then why did they ask the qualified supervisors to also apply?? he asked. 152 of the zonal supervisors to be retrenched are from the Brong Ahafo Region, 120 from Ashanti, 99 from Volta and 84 from Upper East. 80 are to be retrenched from the Eastern Region, 77 from the Central Region, 74 from the Western Region, the Greater Accra Region 29 and the Upper West Region 29.

In the NDC era, the opposition alleged the cadres of the ruling party had been recruited to work at both the NMP and the NFED.