Dismissal is coup d’état - embattled CCT executives cry out
Two top executive members of the Coalition of Concerned Teachers (CCT), who were sacked, have decried their dismissal, describing it as a coup d’état. At a press conference in Accra last Tuesday, the dismissed President and the General Secretary of the association, Mr Ernest Opoku and Mr Raymond Boakye Yiadom respectively, said their dismissal was also politically motivated.
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“Indeed what has taken place is a coup d’état. It has been masterminded by some powerful politicians who felt threatened that with the firebrand nature of CCT, we were going to be brutally harsh on their abysmal performance in education going into the election 2016,’’ Mr Opoku said.
Dismissal
On December 19, 2016, the National Executive Committee (NEC) of CCT held a press conference to announce the sacking of the two for allegedly misappropriating GH¢413,988 belonging to the labour union.
Consequently, the Vice-President of the coalition, Mr King Ali Awudu, and the Deputy General Secretary, Mr Ako Forson, were asked by the NEC to step in as President and the General Secretary, respectively.
According to the NEC, Messers Opoku and Darkwa were asked to step aside in December 2015 following an internal auditor’s report that discovered that funds belonging to the union had been misappropriated.
Investigations by an external auditor, it said, confirmed the internal auditor’s report and further revealed that more money could not be accounted for.
Rebuttal
But in a sharp rebuttal, Mr Opoku said the wording of the final internal audit report was that the money was “unaccounted’’ for and not “misappropriated’’ as used by the NEC in its press conference to announce the dismissals.
“This shows that the money had not been stolen instead, they had purposefully been used but receipts and invoices covering those transactions were not available at the time of the audit.
“A file containing receipts and invoices vouched to the tune of GH¢210, 000 was later retrieved by the accounts officer and handed over to the committee but this was grossly rejected by the committee with the flimsy excuse that it was too late,’’ he said.
He also stated that it was illogical for the NEC to sack the two top officers because they were not found guilty of stealing any money belonging to the association.’
“Nowhere in the report was it stated that we were directly pocketing money of the union,’’he said.
Court case
The dismissed president also said the two executives would appeal a High Court judgement that gave the NEC the green light to go ahead with the dismissals.
In June 2016, Messrs Opoku and Darkwa sued the union at an Accra High Court seeking the court to halt their planned dismissal.
But their case was thrown out by the court, presided over by Mr Justice Daniel Mensah.
Mr Opoku, however, said the two dismissed executive members would appeal the judgement soon.
“I must put on record that we will appeal because nowhere in the judgement did the judge indicate that someone has embezzled money,’’ he said.
