Double salary: Lawyers write to CID on behalf of Minority

Members of the Minority in Parliament accused of taking double salaries under the previous government have confirmed instructing their lawyers to write to the Criminal Investigations Department (CID) over the issue.

They are specifically asking the CID to provide them with details of the allegation, without it they would not be able to assist the CID in its investigation.

The National Democratic Congress Minority in Parliament on Wednesday met to consider a legal action against the Western Publications, the publishers of Daily Guide newspaper for publishing defamatory statement about its members.

“The information indicates that the ministers, who were Members of Parliament (MPs), were drawing salaries as MPs and at the same time receiving their monthly salaries as ministers, contrary to the law,” the Daily Guide reported in its Tuesday, April 10, 2018 edition.

Members of the Minority at the meeting concluded that the paper should be sued but before then, the CID must provide them with the details of the alleged double salaries.

The Minority had already discredited the publication at a press conference on Tuesday where it also spoke against invitation by the Criminal Investigations Department.

“Government must really be in an indecent hurry to divert attention from its failings by this pathetic attempt to cow us into submission,” former deputy Finance Minister, Cassiel Ato Forson told journalists on Tuesday.

Speaking further on the issue on Onua FM’s Yen Nsempa on Thursday hosted by Bright Kwasi Asempa, the Member of Parliament for Tamale Central in the Northern Region Inusah Abdulai Bistav Fuseini said: “we have instructed our lawyers to write to the police and our lawyer have written to them”.

“What we seek to know is what was the double salary? How many months did this happen? At what point did they realized that double salary has been received?” the MP explained.

The Ranking Member on the Constitutional, Legal and Parliamentary Affairs Committee of Parliament said “We don’t want to go around fiction so if they can’t help us, we shall not mind them”.

“The police have to give us enough information to be able to assist them”, he said.

“My advice to the minority caucus is to go to court because the treatment that has been given to us is discriminately and you can’t treat people differently based on their political affiliation…it is also witch hunting. It is part of the grand scheme to tarnish the reputation and defame former ministers and MPs of the NDC”, Alhaji Inusah Fuseini asserted.