NIA boss Ken Attafuah: Akufo-Addo barred me from hiring NPP members
- Ken Attafuah has disclosed that president Akufo-Addo barred the hiring of NPP members at the NIA
- He says the president wants to build apolitical state institutions
- His disclosure has sparked massive anger among the NPP footsoldiers
Professor Ken Attafuah, the Executive Director of the National Identification Authority (NIA), says President Nana Akufo-Addo barred him from recruiting any member of the governing New Patriotic Party (NPP) at the NIA.
This is because the president wants to end the practice of staffing critical state institutions with party footsoldiers.
Source: UGC
“The President, His Excellency Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo, has charged me that I should make sure no party executives are hired in the process,” Professor Attafuah told Kumasi-based Angel FM.
He said the president’s vision is to build a neutral public service and “does not want to leave a legacy of employing his party members and packing them into a particular sector.”
“Neutrality is one of the principles of the Public Service. We need political neutrality so we are doing what the law says we should do and the President supports it,” he added.
Commenting on the development in an interview with YEN.com.gh, Private legal practitioner, Professor Stephen Kweku Asare, popularly known on social media as Kweku Azar came to the defense of the beleaguered Executive Director of the National Identification Authority (NIA).
Speaking to YEN.com.gh, Professor Azar argued that Professor Attafuah is the last person to “look down on anyone, as some are trying to infer from his remarks.”
“That is not a contested statement and is also taken directly from the NPP manifesto. The real problem that we must address is how to depoliticize our public institutions to make them work for everyone,” he added.
Meanwhile, the Volta Regional Secretary of the National Democratic Congress (NDC), James Gunu, took a dig at the president following reports that he spent GHC2.8million on his recent foreign travels.
Speaking in an interview with YEN.com.gh, Gunu said: “The president says one thing and does the opposite.”
President Akufo-Addo, according to the North Tongu lawmaker, Samuel Okudzeto Ablakwa, spent a whopping GHC2.8million during his trips to South Africa and France.
Akufo-Addo used the services of a private jet, Airbus ACJ320neo which is owned by Acropolis Aviation based in Farnborough, UK, and registered as G-KELT.
It is the most luxurious and the most expensive in the Acropolis fleet.
The NDC MP said renting the jet caused the Ghanaian taxpayer approximately £15,000 an hour.
“The President is Perforating the public purse instead of protecting the public purse as he promised,” Gunu told YEN.com.gh.
“He is just not thinking about the next generation of Ghanaians,” he added.
In other news, Oliver Barker-Vormawor, one of the conveners of the #FixTheCountry movement says no one can stop them from demonstrating following the ruling of the Supreme Court.
“There's no ban on us and nothing banning us from going ahead with the demonstration,” Barker-Vormawor stated on Morning Starr on Starr103.5FM and monitored by YEN.com.gh.
His comments come on the back of a warning by the Ghana Police Service to the public not to participate in any call for demonstration by the #FixTheCountry conveners.
According to the police, in a statement released on Tuesday and seen by YEN.com.gh, the planned protest is not in compliance with the provisions of the Public Order Act.
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Source: YEN.com.gh
