PPP agents demand payment of allowances

Agents of the Progressive People’s Party (PPP) in the December 2012 general election have called on the leadership of the party to pay them their allowances for the work done without any further delay.

Gifty Quansah and Emmanuel Ampah who monitored the election at Apam made the appeal on behalf of other agents and told the Ghana News Agency that the leadership of the party at Gomoa West had refused to pay them their allowances on the grounds that the parliamentary candidate incurred debts and that their allowances would be used to defray part of the debts.

This explanation did not go down well with the agents, especially Miss Quansah who said at the time she was asked to be an agent for the party, she was nursing one-month-old baby and she had to engage a baby-sitter with the promise of sharing her allowance with the person.

“If we had been told that we were going to do the work for free, we would not have wasted our time,” Miss Quansah said.

When Mr Martin Ekwam, Constituency Chairman for the PPP was contacted he denied the assertion of the agents.

Mr Ekwam said the party promised the agents of providing them with a meal at the polling station, and that they were given 2.00 Ghana cedis each on the day they were presented with their accreditation; rice with an egg each, a biscuit and a drink each on the day of the election.

Ms Leah Anderson Sinyason, the party's parliamentary candidate, also corroborated the Constituency Chairman's statement when she was contacted. She said the agents were recruited from the party and therefore were expected to sacrifice to build the party.