YEA boss appoints indicted persons as directors

Kobina Beecham, the Chief Executive of Youth Employment Agency (YEA) formerly GYEEDA, has allegedly appointed some people as District Directors of the agency but investigations carried out by The New Crusading GUIDE show that some of the newly-appointed Directors are under investigations by the Economic and Organised Crime Office (EOCO) for various offences.

Some of the appointees, who are not under the radar of EOCO, have had their romance with GYEEDA terminated over a year ago after they had been declared illegal staff by the Agency.

Among the people who are being investigated by EOCO but have been appointed as District Directors are Stephen Twum (Director, Birim Central), Borketey Rapheal (Director, Agona West), Basiru Ibrahim (Efutu Municipal Assemby), all in the Central region.

The others are Yorke Dadzi Bonney (Director, Ningo Prampram), Barbara Edem Cosmos (Ga East) both in Greater Accra.

Hussein Mohammed Bashar whose salary was suspended last September and dragged to EOCO to undergo investigations has also been appointed as the new Director for West Akim District in the Eastern Region.

A source at EOCO said the Investigators were not happy with the turn of events especially where there are official correspondence between the two bodies.

"We are not happy with what Mr. Beecham has done but we assure you that their new appointments would not deter us from carrying out a thorough investigation on them. However, it would have been proper for him to wait for us to conclude our investigations," the source said.

The people listed above were all indicted by a 2013 Auditor General Report where their names were said to have been unduly added to the migration list and paid salaries.

In fact, one of them, Stephen Twum, was last year asked to refund over Ghc22,000.00 being salary he had drawn from January to December 2013.

Justifying the request for the refund, a letter dated 22nd June, 2015 and addressed to Mr Twum stated in part that, "amongst others, the External Auditors discovered that you were UNILATERALLY added to the migrated list by Mr. Selasie Attipoe-Fittz (DNC-Human Resource Manager) CONTRARY TO APROVED GUIDELINES as you were a beneficiary on the Better Ghana Management Service(BGMS) or Beneficiary Payroll."

In effect, Mr Twum was cited for receiving double salary from both GYEEDA and Better Ghana Services as against approved guidelines.

Interestingly, Mr Twum and others after the termination of their appointments were under some unexplained circumstances brought back to YEA in July last year by Mr Attipoe-Fittz who was indicted by the Audit report for unilaterally adding their names to the migration list.

It took the intervention of the immediate past CEO of YEA, Vincent Kuagbenu to halt their comeback as he dragged them to the EOCO to face investigations.