"Deceased" Labourer Dismissed, ...

...Paid Mere ?314,000 As 4-Month Salary

MORO RAZAK, the 21-year-old man fighting his unjust dismissal by the former Chief Executive of the Kwahu South District has been paid a ridiculous amount of ?314,000 by the assembly, which still insists on his dismissal.

This time, the architect of Razak's victimisation is not the ex-DCE, Kwame Opoku Preko, but his Co-ordinating Director, S. N. Kasta, who has just been transferred to the Ministries in Accra.

A check at the Odwenanoma Rural Bank, Mpraeso, where Razak was paid, showed that Kasta wrote a letter instructing the bank to pay Razak ?314,000 being his salaries for December 1998 to March 1999 and return the remaining of his accumulated salaries to government chest.

He is said to have given the directive on the eve of his departure to Accra.

Kasta's action is clearly against what the Office of the Head of Civil Service advised him to do on June 11, this year.

To get Razak's supposed dismissal formalised, Kasta had included the former's name in a list of five people described as "retired or dear or personnel who have vacated their posts" that he sent to the Head of Civil Service on May 31, 2001.

"I should be grateful if approval would be given to this Assembly to replace two sanitary labourers, one each labourer, caretaker and night watchman as a result of death, retirement and vacation of post", Kasta has pleaded.

Strangely enough, when it came to assigning specific reasons against each worker's name in a list attached to the letter, the co-ordinating director side stepped all three retirement, vacation of post and death - and wrote 'dismissal' against Razaks name.

When the authority for replacement arrived, approval had been given for the replacement of all the five apart from Moro Razak.

In the Head of Civil Service letter, signed by Mr. Sampson Adjei, who is director of the Human Resource Management Division, those approved to be replaced were Nabli Grunshie - labourer, Bashiru Ahmed - caretaker, Bukari Bariba - labourer and Ayobo Mohammed - watchman.

As has been published in this paper before, Moro Razak was officially appointed a labourer of the Kwahu South District Assembly on December 1, 1988, after serving Preko's family as a househelp for nearly a year.

On entering the Civil Service, Razak became entitled to monthly salary (starting from ?783,470 per annum), Social Security contributions and various rights as a government employee.

According to him, this emboldened him to stop washing the underpants of Mrs. Preko, something he had been made to do, as a houseboy for months.

The seeming growth of wings by Razak provoked Preko, who quickly pronounced him dismissed on the alleged grounds of "misbehaviour towards me and my wife".

That sparked off a tussle between the then teenager and the KSDA, a struggle which has persisted to date.

Such was Moro Razak's determination to prove his innocence that when an Accra businessman once offered to give him a more lucrative job, upon reading about his plight in the Chronicle, Razak turned down the gesture.

But Messrs Preko and Kasta seemed to have taken a rather entrenched position, ignoring the advice given them by both the CHRAJ and Civil Servants Association(CSA) to whom the labourer had petitioned.

As had ever been reported, the CSA noted that Preko could not proffer any tangible charges against Razak; nor had he ever queried him over any acts or omissions.

Indeed the association noted the lack of any objective appraisal of work or conduct to support the severe punishment of dismissal.

It concluded from Preko's own reactions to Razak's complaints that the DCE's action was founded "purely on domestic matters which have nothing to do with his efficiency."

Right now, Preko, the deposed DCE, has turned a farmer at Nsuogyaman near Mame Krobo in the Afram Plains. Kasta is in Accra. But their "bomb" continues to shatter the hopes of Razak.

"I will welcome any help that will accord me justice from any quarter," he told the Chronicle.