NGO dupes rural communities under pretext of providing support for vulnerable
Scores of people in some rural communities have been allegedly fleeced of more than GH¢20,000 by a non-governmental organisation (NGO) under the pretext of offering them support and scholarships.
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Some of the victims are from the Ashanti, Eastern, Central, Greater Accra and Western regions.
Two of the top officials of the NGO, the United Kingdom Scholarship, have been arrested by the police in Kasoa.
The identities of the suspects have been given as James Atto Yeboah, 31, the Manager, and Augustine Mensah, 25, the Administrator.
Three suspects who are on the run are an European woman, identified only as Lily, who is said to be the owner of the NGO; the Managing Director, Kofi Isaac, and the Supervisor, Prince Asante.
Briefing the Daily Graphic, the Kasoa Divisional Police Commander, Assistant Commissioner of Police (ACP) Mr Joseph Oklu Gyamera, said the police started receiving complaints from some of the victims about the operations of the NGO in 2015.
Following the complaints, he said, the police initiated investigations into the operations of the NGO, which led to the arrest of the suspects.
“Further investigations revealed that most of the victims were students, farmers and the aged,” he added.
According to the police, field officers of the NGO were engaged to go round villages in the regions to register needy people at a fee for them to benefit from the support and scholarship programmes of the organisation.
Interested persons were then made to pay registration fees ranging between GH¢10 and GH¢40, after which the field officers helped the would-be beneficiaries to fill forms with their personal details.
After allegedly registering the people to ostensibly benefit from the NGO’s support and scholarship programmes, the operators of the NGO and their field officers vanished into thin air.
Arrest of suspects
Following numerous complaints from some of the victims, the Kasoa Police arrested the two men believed to be the masterminds of the NGO, while a manhunt has been mounted for the three others who are on the run.
Some of the areas whose residents have fallen victim to the operations of the NGO are Sefwi Wiawso and Asawinso in the Western Region; Obuasi, Adientem and Kuntanase in the Ashanti Region; Akraman and Supona in the Greater Accra Region, and Obosomase-Akuapem in the Eastern Region.
In the Central Region, the group is said to have fleeced residents of communities such as Okroase, Panfokrom, Okyesowa and Babenso.
They are said to have collected more than GH¢20,000 from residents of about eight villages.
Field officer
Mr Gyamera said the NGO promised to offer scholarships to students who registered with them, in addition to the provision of learning materials, including exercise books.
According to him, the aged were promised bags of rice, gallons of oil and money at the end of every month, while farmers were promised money to help them expand their farming activities.
Additionally, he said, five of the field officers, all women, claimed their lives were being threatened by some of the victims after their employers disappeared.
He said the field officers claimed they had been promised a monthly salary of GH¢400 but they were only paid once out of six months.
He said the field officers told the police that they were made to send the money collected from interested people through mobile money to the suspects.
The field officers became suspicious when they realised that their employers were not fulfilling their promises to the people they had registered, he said.
Advice to victims
Mr Gyamera said the victims, who had also become suspicious when they realised that the phones of the operators of the NGO were off, threatened the field officers.
After mounting a search for the suspects, he said, the police arrested Yeboah and Mensah at their hideout in a hotel in Kasoa on February 15, 2016 while they were recruiting a new set of field officers.
He urged victims to contact the police and offer information on the other suspects and advised people in especially the rural areas to be careful when people came to them with proposals of improving their living standards by verifying the authenticity of the claims.
