Minority accuse management of YEA of engaging in illegal mass transfers
The Minority Members of Parliament have accused the management of the Youth Employment Agency (YEA) of engaging in illegal mass transfers of staff of the Agency who are suspected to be National Democratic Congress (NDC) supporters.
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According to them, the said transfers were designed to remove the affected staff from their offices and quickly replace them with friends, family and political supporters.
They again claimed that departmental heads of the YEA had been asked to proceed on leave and were replaced with contract staff who were paid huge salaries without recourse to the Fair Wages and Salaries Structure.
Speaking at a press conference in Accra on Thursday, the Ranking Member on Youth, Sports and Culture and Member of Parliament for South Tongu, Mr Kobena Mensah Woyome, said the actions of the acting Chief Executive Officer of YEA violated the Public Services Commission (PSC) Act 1994 and YEA Act 2015, which established the YEA as a public service institution but not as a unit of any political party in power.
He, therefore, appealed to the PSC, the Auditor General, the Commission on Human Rights and Administrative Justice (CHRAJ), the National Peace Council, the Christian Council of Ghana, the National Chief Imam, international organisations and civil society organisations to speak up to save the YEA from disintegrating.
"We all owe it a duty to the teaming jobless youth of Ghana to ensure that the YEA survives and is able to perform its mandates without such avoidable hindrances," he said.
Transfers
Mr Woyome said the affected staff had received letters signed by the acting regional directors releasing them from their respective regions to different regions under the name 'staff movements'.
He said the affected staff were given only 11 days to report to the different regions contrary to the one-month period given for emergency transfers per the PSC human resource manual.
Another worry, Mr Woyome said, was that the affected staff had not been given any specific assignments to perform in the new regions.
"We are without any doubt that these movements do not pass for transfers neither do they pass for secondment nor posting," he said.
The legislator said if the movements went ahead, the cost implication would be in the region of GHc12 million, and indicated that the amount could be used to train 1,000 community policing assistants at the Police Training School.
Regional directors
Mr Woyome said 10 regional directors of the Agency who had been asked to proceed on leave had been replaced with regional youth organisers of the New Patriotic Party (NPP) without the requisite qualifications and experience.
He said the youth organisers were appointed on contract without any recourse to the PSC Laws and Policies governing recruitment in the public service.
"Similar treatment was meted out to the then directors of human resource, technical services, monitoring and evaluation, records, public relations and research planning", he said.
Ghost names
Mr Woyome denied that the past management had bloated the beneficiary payroll with 2,999 ghost names.
He said some of the beneficiaries might not have been very regular in recent times at their work places while some might not be attending at all due to the non-payment of their allowances for several months.
Minority leader
The Deputy Minority Leader, Mr James Avedzi, said the mass transfers was a way to frustrate the youth whose salaries would not be enough to rent rooms in their new regions to resign for the government to replace them with political supporters.
He said the Minority would use all legal means, including going to court to ensure the protection of the rights of the staff of the YEA.
