Community Personnel Assistants under the Youth Employment Agency (YEA) in the East Gonja municipality have complained they might be forced to resign following failure of authorities to pay their allowances which have been arrears for several months, the local municipal field commander, Abdulahi Alhassan told Starr News.
“As I’m talking right now those who came for the fifth batch have not received anything since they came from training and that is our main problem. Some of us too, those from the third and fourth batches, you see that this month the payment would come, following month that person would not receive his or her payment, due to that some of the personnel are even saying that they have to stop work in order for the government to work on those kind of problems”, Alhassan revealed.
According to him, the delay in payment of allowances are affecting their lives as they have been left undecided whether to quit or continue the service.
The officer repeated that some of his colleagues have not been paid for more than half a year and others are receiving irregular payments.
He mentioned that several efforts for authorities to address the concern have not yielded any positive outcome, hence the threat of resignations.
“From what we were taught at the training ground, securities are not allow to do demonstrations, for that matter, demonstration is out, but the only thing is to handover the uniform and go your way. If you should be working without pay, then you just have to leave the work and go home”
The officers in the Municipal are not alone protesting for their allowance to be paid by the youth employment agency. About 200 of them in the Tamale metropolis have also been demanding for their accumulated arrears to be settled.
These officers have accused the Northern Region Director of the agency, Sule Salifu of stashing and diverting their monies into his private investments.
In response, the director has accused the officers of running a smear campaign against him after saying “it is no news” if community police officer hasn’t been paid for five or six months.
“I mean it’s so annoying that I have tolerated these boys for a long period and they are going to destroy….look, and they can’t my reputation. They should go even back when I was the regional secretary of the NPP, they should go prudential bank. I am not a criminal. I am not a die hard of making money quick. In any case, none of them can say they are more NPP than me. What I have done for this party if a brick of it fall on them they will burn into ashes”, Salifu replied in an interview with Tamale Radio.
The Community Policing Assistant is under the Youth in Community Service and Security module of the Youth Employment Agency. It is to offer Employment opportunities for the youth by augmenting the human resource capacity of Ghana’s security services.
Until recently, the module in the region has been operating actively without such protest and concerns.
Source: Ghana/Starrfmonline.com/Eliasu Tanko
