Some 35 street cleaners at Zabzugu employed under the Youth Employment Agency in the Northern region have had their accumulated meagre monthly allowance blocked by the district agency’s coordinator, Abubakari Yussif, after he claimed they were members of the NDC.
Thirty-seven were initially affected by the blockade but two were later cleared as members of the NPP and went for their allowance at a local GN Bank where the allowance are stashed since last week when part of their longstanding arrears were paid by government.
The workers said they went to the bank on Monday, days after receiving a circular that their accounts had been credited only to be told by bank officials that they could not access the money because the coordinator had strongly ordered so.
The youth coordinator who also holds the position of constituency youth organizer of the NPP told the victims they had been sacked because their party (NDC) was no longer in power and he intended using the allowance to pay some 27 members of the NPP he had unilaterally employed without permission of even regional secretariat of the agency.
A staff of the GN Bank confirmed that all accounts of the workers had been credited but insisted the monies would not be made available to the account holders until the coordinator permitted.
One of the victims, a 50-year-old Aliu Abdulahi told Starr News that they received GHC300 in their accounts as three months allowance out of the eight months owed them by government.
He said he was shocked by the decision of the coordinator because for his several years with the agency, he had never witnessed such a “political vendetta” since the inception of the agency in 2007.
“They claim they identified 37 people as NDC members and wrote a long letter to the GN asking them not to release the money to those people. The coordinator claims he has employed new 27 workers who all members of NPP because Nana Addo is in power now. He said he wants to use the money to pay those he employed”
“When zoomlion started in 2007 under president Kufour, the NDC when they came to power in 2008 didn’t sack a single member of the party but maintained them and employed more but now that Nana Addo is in power, the youth employment coordinator is sacking all of us, saying we are members of the NDC. There is nothing like this going on at Karaga, Bimbila, Saboba, it is only in Zabzugu that the NPP is sacking zoomlion workers,” Aliu disclosed.
Aliu chastised the NPP youth organizer for promoting division in the area and added that the victims would embark on street protests if the coordinator refused to release the paltry allowances.
The district coordinator could not address the matter when questioned by Starr News via a telephone conversation.
He repeatedly requested to know the source of the information and stayed silent on the telephone for many hours before dropping the call when Starr News declined to pander to his demand.
Source: Ghana/Starrfmonline.com/103.5FM/Eliasu Tanko
